A Study on Business Strategy of Medium and Small Manufacturing Service Firms – Taking Mouse and Keyboard Products in the Computer Peripheral Industry as Example

• Main Authors: Jen-Ming Chiang, 蔣壬銘
• Other Authors: Yi-Long Jam
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98653140222363789410

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國際企業管理組 === 94 === Most of the firms in Taiwan IT industry are mainly taking manufacturing service as their main business model, for a long time the medium and small size firms among them are facing several different challenges in the industry, such as the business pressure from the leading large manufacturing service firms, EMS(Electronic Manufacturing Service) giants are coveting after acquiring them, the rapid evolving consumer market is adding complexity toward their daily business, key component suppliers are not necessarily under their control, plus more and more competitors are entering the competition. What exactly the business environment these medium and small firms are within? What kinds of difficult positions they are encountering? And what are the possible business strategies they can apply? These are the three main topics to be discussed in this study. The thesis was probing into the key factors which block those medium and small manufacturing service firms from survival and growth by using the research data from literature review, the industry analysis and case studies, then converting those key blocking factors directly into the key successful factors (KSF) of business management for medium and small manufacturing service firms by using the “comparison method”. Five KSF’s were identified: (1) Build up own core competence based differentiation competitive advantages. (2) Establish a highly competitive superior team. (3) Reinforce project management and ensure every new product development will be a success. (4) Proactively learn from those painful field return lessons and eliminate the delusion of “low cost must be coupled with low quality”. (5) Be capable to effectively control the factory and capacity expansion. The study discovers that among the five KSF’s for medium and small manufacturing service firms, the “internal factors” are more important than those “external factors”. Lastly, in addition to provide some research suggestions to those case study firms in this thesis, in order to ensure the study can cover wider scope of business management, the last part of the thesis used McKinsey 7S framework: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Style, Staff, Skills, Shared value/Superordinate goals, to provide more supplementary research suggestions and wishing that these suggestions can eventually be some good references on business strategy for those medium and small manufacturing service firms.