The concept and techniques of “manufacturing strategy” offer managers the opportunity to use their production function as a strategic weapon in competition, an apparently attractive objective. Yet after about 25 years, the use of manufacturing in corporate strategy (MCS) as a management practice is not widespread. In contrast, however, in academic literature it appears to be flourishing and rapidly growing in popularity. This paper seeks to answer this apparent paradox, beginning with the history of MCS as it was developed as a theory of design to enable a manufacturing system to be focused on a key competitive task. Common criticisms of MCS, such as “tradeoffs,” “focus” and “undynamic,” are examined and refuted as valid reasons for its only modest usage. Instead, three “new” problems in the MCS concept and its techniques are suggested as genuine needs for the completion of the theory and for its becoming more universally understood and used by industrial managers.

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This essay has two stories to tell: first, as promised, the evolution of what is known as ''manufacturing strategy'' and, also, the parallel story of the value of combining teaching and research through the Harvard Business School's focus on teaching by the case method. This second tale may be of particular interest in view of recent critiques of business schools and their research practices [Bennis, W.G., O'Toole, J., 2005. How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review 83 (5), 96-104].

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After a decade of updating and modernizing U.S. manufacturing with advanced management techniques (AMTS), competitive results have been generally disappointing. Industrial managers under pressure have relied on AMTS to solve their problems, but in this era of ever more intense and fast‐moving competition, this has generally proven inadequate. Competitors abroad have moved ahead just as vigorously and usually earlier in applying AMTS such as JIT, TQM, and MRP, so the result has been “competitíve gridlock.” Simultaneously, industry is full of misfits between manufacturing policies and strategy, as AMT‐driven managers make and change policies piecemeal. The mediocre results of this conventional, operational mindset demonstrate that sheer productivity improvement or other conventional performance objectives seldom build unique competitive advantage. Winning in competition today requires a different management approach, one which is focused on establishing competitive superiority. Basic structural redesign is the key to clear competitive advantage, but its rare practice signals the presence of problems in the skills, attitudes, and premises of many industrial managers. Rather than continuing the common practice of relying on available AMTS, a new breed of industrial managers is needed, equipped with a breadth of skills which encompass all the functional areas of production and who are business‐ and strategy‐rather than narrowly operation‐ and functionally‐oriented.