FIELDS AND WEAPONS OF THE COMPETITION: A MODEL TO FORMULATE THE PRODUCTION STRATEGIES FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM COMPANIES

Abstract

The present work argues that the responsible persons for the function production in the small and medium companies (SMC) should know how to formulate and to implement production strategies to the competitive advantages that the organization looks for to conquer, to maintain and to enlarge, or, in other words, aligned to the business strategy. For so much, it recommends the use of the model of fields and weapons of the competition (FWC). Besides considerations about production strategy and competitive advantage in the SMC, the work presents a synthesis of the model of FWC, that it is a model quite adapted to formulate the business strategy so much as the production strategies. Field of the competition is where the company looks for competitive advantage and it is defined by the business strategy. Competition weapon is a factor that the organization uses to reach competitive advantage in a field of the competition and it is defined by the operational strategy. For each field of the competition there is a group of appropriate weapons, and the company should make use of them to overcome the competitors. The objective of this work is to determine that group of weapons.