Manufacturing Audit in the Process of Strategy Formulation

The need to develop manufacturing strategies which are consistent with and supportive of overall business strategies is now widely accepted. A manufacturing audit approach which has been found useful in the process of manufacturing strategy formulation is described. Within manufacturing strategy, the need for a manufacturing audit is identified and the current approaches to audit are reviewed. These existing approaches do not provide an adequate audit process for use in strategy formulation. A structured audit approach based on established frameworks is developed and preliminary results of its use are presented. The approach has been successfully used in several companies; however, there is need for further work in looking at the social aspects of the process.