Business timeliness: the intersections of strategy and operations management

A compressed cycle time enables products to be manufactured more quickly and has the potential of locking in the most profitable customer. Applies time‐based process mapping (TBPM), a time compression technique, to a firm that operates in a resource‐based environment, and undertake detailed case studies. Analyses the firm's key supply chains and examine related strategic issues. Competitive forces analyses indicate that depleting supply, which is valuable, in an attractive industry affects considerably the time horizon of strategy formulation. Robust supply chains integration requires a good consideration of a firm's resources, capabilities and external environments. Both the industrial organisation and resource‐based view are important to sustain business timeliness and operations management. It seems, from the case studies, that in times of intense competition with shortages of resources, continued globalisation, and the fast and slow world divide, the integration of value chains and systems is an effective way of achieving business timeliness. Enabling yet effective strategies and technologies only come to their optimum with proper leadership – the interconnectivity of the time compression triangle.