Today manufacturing focus means learning how not to make things—how not to make the parts that divert a company from cultivating its skills, parts its suppliers could make more efficiently. This idea has often been advanced, but few managers have found a way to bring its logic down to earth. My purpose is to do just that, with a new method for making sourcing decisions consistent with a strategy of survival in highly engineered products. This approach is based on simple principles.
A version of this article appeared in the November–December 1992 issue of Harvard Business Review.