Still, 45 years after Skinner’s (1969) call for manufacturing strategies, explicit manufacturing strategies are scarse in manufacturing industry, especially in SMEs. Together with a number of SMEs, we have developed a manufacturing strategy tool, aimed at supporting manufacturing strategy formulation. In this paper, the focus is on requirements on a manufacturing strategy tool related to the usability in SMEs. Results from evaluation of the tool during development is presented. The resulting tool was considered to be useful to the participating companies, helping them to get over the initial treshold of working with manufacturing strategies.