An Integrative Approach for Developing our Flexible and Sustainable Manufacturing Industry

ABSTRACT

In many countries, manufacturing is seen to play a critical role in the economy. From the social science, science and engineering perspectives, various literature have pointed out that the positive effect of manufacturing goes beyond the output and the employment that it creates. In addition to the direct results of manufacturing, there is an indirect impact specifically in terms of supporting the jobs in the other sectors. With the importance of manufacturing from many perspectives, all with the aim of developing manufacturing for national progress and economic prosperity, a question pertinent to explore is, “what will it take for a country to have a competitive and sustainable manufacturing industry?”

The main proposition of this research is to look at the manufacturing industry as analogue of its smaller counterparts of manufacturing organizations. Specifically, this research proposes (1) to manage our country’s manufacturing industry as a large chain of institutions and organizations that have the aim of providing products or component goods to the local and global market; (2) to structure the internal chain within the manufacturing industry such that the industry will possess the characteristic of flexibility to arrive at different products that will be demanded by the market at any time; and (3) to highlight that the manufacturing industry should be “self-supporting” which can be done if the profits or rewards of manufacturing at the different points of the supply chain can be re-invested for generating scientific and practical knowledge that will be the seed resource, i.e., raw material, for future manufacturing.

Through case studies, this paper illustrates how different countries that possess characteristics reflective of integrated activities for manufacturing, are able to direct their manufacturing industries to highly contribute to their national development.

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