Managing Competition with China. Proposal of an Operational Model for SMEs

摘要

Most of the Western Companies, in the last years, have been facing a tough competition against manufacturers based in developing countries, especially in China. How to face the Chinese competition is an open and relevant issue. This paper aims at giving a contribution to the on-going debate proposing an operational model which might help many SMEs to gain a stronger competitive position. The proposed model can be considered as a rationalization and generalization of an approach to change successfully applied by the author in the last fifteen years in over 30 small and medium enterprises. As to the target, this model has been designed primarily around those SMEs characterized by one or more of the following characteristics: no strong brands, operating in price-driven markets and with products/processes which cannot benefit significantly from investments in R&D. The proposed operational model is based mainly on three distinct leverages: minimization of the order lead time, elimination of constraints about the minimum order quantity and ability to manage customized, ad-hoc products. In the paper, much attention is devoted to the complex topic of the feasibility of the proposed model. In doing this we make use of a case study. Such a case study is paradigmatic under two remarkably important standpoints: first it backs the applicability of the operational; second, it allows to evaluate what, in practice, has proved to be particularly crucial for the firm and to analyse critically the most relevant lessons learned casting light on the critical success factor for the implementation of the proposed model.