Chaparral Steel differentiates itself from other minimills because of the various activities at which they excel and the relationship among these activities. Four central and interplaying activity themes were clear in the Chaparral Steel case and will be used to build our first framework. Before modeling the framework-related contributions of the Chaparral Steel case, we want to establish a baseline for our framework. The building blocks or foundation of the framework will be based on what we believe is a "framework tautology": all companies share a fundamental framework that consists of allocating resource to acquire inputs and adding value to them to produce an output, which will be purchased by one or more companies. Using this tautology as a starting point, it is very simple to map Chaparral Steel's business to this rudimentary framework. Chaparral Steel allocates financial resource for the purchase of raw materials (scrap metal) and machinery, devotes personnel resource (manpower) to operating the machinery to reform the raw materials into finished steel products, and sells the finished products to various firms, such as builders.
The Chaparral Steel case gives us insight into the operations and successes of an industrial manufacturing company, which can be used to add to our framework. We identified four activity groups that are at the heart of Chaparral Steel's strategy and decision making process and, therefore, should be modeled. The four items are Chaparral Steel's leadership, its distinct culture, its technological advantage, and its high productivity. Furthermore, each of these critical elements follows a linear pattern. Chaparral Steel's leadership style was the primary influencer of the company's culture, which, in turn, is largely responsible fo ...