International Manufacturing Strategy Survey [IMSS] and Made in Europe

Every four years London Business School teams up with major institutions around the world to conduct a comprehensive study of manufacturing. The 2005 study -- IMSS Fourth Round -- is now underway. As a non-profit making network, IMSS plays a major role in helping companies to:

• Conceptualize and identify those manufacturing management policies and practices which best achieve the strategic objectives of the companies.
  
• Create the possibility of performing comparative analyses of manufacturing strategies in the assembly industry at national and international levels, and of studying a series of specific hypotheses in the same context.
  
• Establish criteria for the introduction of best practices as well as their level of transferability and adaptability to different environments.
  
• Enable participating companies to make their own comparative analyses, using their sectorial, national and international benchmarks.
  
• Encourage communication between participating companies and schools on a national level, with regard to specific manufacturing management aspects which directly affect these companies.

The International Manufacturing Strategy Survey  [IMSS] was initiated in 1992 by Chris Voss and Per Lindberg [Chalmers University, Sweden] to study manufacturing strategies on a global scale and at a national level, and to establish a common database on manufacturing strategies, practices and results. The original network included some 20 business schools and 600 major companies from the assembly manufacturing sector.

First  Round – IMSS 1

The results of the first round, IMSS 1, were published in 'International Manufacturing Strategies - Context, Content and Change' [Per Lindberg, Christopher Voss and Kathryn Blackmon, eds], Kluwer Academic Publishers.

The first round served to review the strategies in some of the key countries and to examine in detail the relationship between national context and these strategies. Also explored were manufacturing practices that any company must address if it is to reach world class standards of performance.  These include: investment in information systems and advanced manufacturing technologies, new forms of work organisation, the broad set of practices known as 'Lean Production' and linking manufacturing strategy to business strategy.

Second Round – IMSS 2

IMSS 2 was conducted in 1996-1997 and gathered observations from 703 companies from the machine industry. Research based on the data  collected covered   supply chain configurations and performance, customer-supplier relationships, typologies of production systems, TQM and logistics and flexible production models.

Third round – IMSS 3 

The third iteration took place in 2001 and attracted over 1,000 selected companies from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, UK and USA.

Award winning paper "Arcs of integration: an international study of supply chain strategies" written by profs. Mark Frohlich and Roy Westbrook and published in the Journal of Operations Management [Vol 19, 2001] was based on results collected from  IMSS global surveys.

MADE IN EUROPE

Made in Europe 3 (1998) (11MB)
 
In this study, some 297 small and medium sized manufacturing companies, mostly in the UK and Italy, were visited to enable them to take part in a facilitated assessment benchmarking programme. The report provided a significant research tool for the SME sector which is a critical part of the industrial economy throughout Europe
 
Made in Europe 2 (1996) (7MB)

Titled 'An Anglo-German Design Study', this report concentrated on the processes that create and bring new products to market. By focusing on some 250 manufacturing operations in the UK and Germany, the experts explored how thoroughly these processes are performing against world-class standards.
 
Made in Europe (1994) (4MB)
 
The research covers four European countries: UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. The original remit has widened not just to include information on how companies fare on a world-class scale, but also to explore what this means for businesses in terms of their future agenda. Made in Europe begins to piece to gather the European manufacturing jigsaw: each single piece illustrates national differences, and together they create a picture of the current state of Northern European manufacturing.
 
Made in Britain (1993)
 
The key conclusions of the first report, 'Made in Britain: The True State of Britain´s Manufacturing Industry', were the most quoted management research findings of 1993.

See also PROBE (Promoting Business Excellence), the leading benchmarking service which was widely used for the above Made in Europe research work. 
 

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