ABSTRACT
Business performance starts with a company’s ability to transform knowledge into processes and products. International knowledge management can be apprehended at both the macro national level and in terms of multinational enterprise (MNEs) research and development efforts. Suppliers also benefit from early industrial collaboration in the form of “concurrent engineering” by sharing the prime contractor’s technological expertise. MNEs can only satisfy international demands for a timely delivery of different goods to different locations if they have an efficient manufacturing and logistics network. Logistics requires not only physical capabilities but also specific knowledge about geography and infrastructure as well as documentary and regulatory requirements, customs administration and banking practices. Analogous to centralised inventories are the “focused factories” that some MNEs build to specialise each of their productive units in a given activity, thereby increasing plant-level economies of scale. A key distinction is between plants that merely assemble modules produced elsewhere, and others that manufacture generic goods.
