Assessing manufacturing strategy definitions utilising text-mining

The variations in Manufacturing Strategy (MS) definitions create confusion and lead to lack of shared understanding between academic researchers and practitioners on its scope. The purpose of this study is to provide an empirical analysis of the paradox in the difference between academic and industry definitions of MS. Natural Language Processing (NLP) based text mining is used to extract primary elements from the various academic, and industry definitions of MS. Co-word and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) provide empirical support for the grouping into nine primary elements. We posit from the terms evolution analysis that there is a stasis currently faced in academic literature towards MS definition while the industry with its emphasis on ‘context’ has been dynamic. We believe that the proposed approach and results of the present empirical analysis can contribute to overcoming the current challenges to MS design and deployment – imprecise definition leading to its inadequate operationalisation.