The predominant model of competition in the marketplace is price offered by various suppliers on identical products. One could call that the "commodity model" of competition.
A pernicious unintended consequence of the great effort to produce
Standards, eg ISO's, for products is that they are seized-upon
as the means to visualise everything which needs to be sourced as a
commodity.
Driven by people whose only model is this "commodity model" of
competition in the marketplace.
Epitomised by the exasperating moment when someone from the purchasing
department walks in congratulating themselves in announcing saving a
few hundred pounds contracting a cheaper source of nominally the same
product - where the engineering team knows that the costs ahead from
the deficiencies resulting in problems will run into millions of pounds.
In manufacturing, there is a natural tendency in time for each manufacturer to concentrate on a niche they evolve into for a range of circumstance and "happenstance" (it was simply chance that a range of abilities concentrate in one place and evolve forward in time).
Taken towards completion of the trend, each manufacturer will be the sole leading expert in a category of product they concentrate upon. In terms of the ability of the personnel they have and the equipment the organisation has.
There is still intense competition.
Visualise that, given everything which has gone before, that has
created the legacy of skill and knowledge, but only the outer
"surface" (visualise the surface of a sphere?) is the current economic
active state. Each organisation inhabits an area of that surface.
The "boundaries" on this surface are between different organisations
with different skills.
Those boundaries of economic activity will rarely be "sharp" and
absolutely defined. They will be diffuse and somewhat shifting.
There will be some overlap, where expertise centred at one point of
one organisation and another expertise centred at another point will
spread so a commercial area of products is within the spread of
ability of both organisations.
An organisation doing less well will lose market presence with
products it would like to retain but which are further from its
"centre". If that organisation is ailing, the competition will creep
in sideways getting ever closer to its most central products.
Losing market share, turn-over and profit, it will become increasingly
difficult to sustain the central "sole expert" expertise - and an
organsisation can go extinct.
Equally valid in the complete view is that an organisation needs to
know what it is good at, and avoid products it does not have an
advantage in, as these would lead to losses competing with
manufacturers for whom the product is in their "sweet zone".
The changing "base-line" resulting from overall technical advancement
in time can require an astute evaluation that a line of product once
valuable and remunerative needs to be withdrawn from. Equally, the
advance of technology can make products which were previously
unattainable now economic to make and a rightful new area to compete
in
[example : for a small local independent steel fabrications company on
a trading estate, accurate laser-cutting of steel to any shape
combined with ready finite-element modelling enables
highly-stress-bearing products for general products which previously
would have been commercially infeasible outside the aircraft industry
(if of interest :
my detailed study
)]
So, in summary - know who your are, what you do, and do it proudly with unwavering confidence.
From this exposition, I present the model of "sideways competition".
The model of "sideways competition" rejects the model of
"commoditisation of everything".
Human endeavour and aspiration will always "leak" better products onto
the market, contrary to the "commoditisation" model, which astute
organisations in better-organised trading regions will benefit from,
so "Darwinism" in commercial activity will result in the relative
rise of that trading area and its organisations.
(R. Smith, 31Dec2017, 14Jan2018)