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Abstract The long-term goals of a manufacturing enterprise are to stay in business make profits. To achieve these goals, it is necessary for these enterprises to understand the business environment. . The twenty-first century business environment can be characterized by expanding global competition and customer individualism leading to high- variety of products which are low in demand. In the 1970s the cost of products usedto be the main lever for obtaining competitive advantage. In the 1980s quality superseded cost and became an important competitivedimension. Now low unit-cost and high quality products no longer solely define the, competitive advantage for most manufacturing enterprises. Today, the customer takes both minimum cost and high quality for grant. Factors .such as delivery performance, custornization of products and environmental issues such as waste generation are assuming a predominant role in defini-ng the success of manufacturing enterprises in terms of increased market share and profitabi I ity. The question is: what can be done under these changing circumstances to stay in business and retain competitive advantage? What is needed is the right manufacturing strategy to meet the challenges of today’s and future markets. In doing so, a manufacturing organization not only has to understand what customers, want, it .also has to develop internal mechanisms to respond to the changes demanded by what the customer wants.’ This requires a paradigm shin in everything that factories do. That means making use of |