The need for ongoing development of industrial practices has its causes in several trends. First, the globalization of competition leads to increased pressures on national industries, challenging their ability to change their strategies and practices. Second, existing technological and organizational practices enhance the possibilities for flexible and cost-efficient production of high quality products. The willingness and ability to adopt such practices are of vital importance for national competitiveness. Third, emerging social and environmental demands cause the traditional technological and organizational modes to become increasingly obsolete. In short, manufacturing firms face numerous and serious challenges, and as researchers we need to understand the nature and quality of manufacturing’s responses under different national and industrial contexts.  

In order to provide the research community with such information, a project has been developed for the investigation of international manufacturing strategies. The aim of the project is to investigate manufacturing strategies and practices in industrialized nations throughout the world. The motivation behind the project is to create possibilities for comparative analyses of manufacturing strategies in the engineering / assembly industries (ISIC 38), and to analyze specific hypotheses within this context. The first iteration of this project (IMSS-I) was carried out and completed in the 1992-94 period, with the participation of over 20 leading institutions and 600 firms in 20 different countries, and the second iteration (IMSS-II) was carried out in the 1996-98 period, with the participation of 25 leading institutions and 703 firms in 23 different countries. The third iteration (IMSS-III) of the project was carried out in the 2000-2002 period, with the participation of 15 leading institutions and 585 firms in 17 different countries. The fourth iteration (IMSS-IV) was carried out in 2006 with the participation of over 700 firms in over 20 countries.