Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-30-2002
Abstract
Invoking the term “best practices” often conjures up the notion of a historically contingent body of regularized routines that are condoned by a particular community. As a whole, they can be viewed as being made up of rules and procedures that construct and legitimatize the way certain people see things and how they talk about them. As a natural consequence, these practices make possible certain statements and communication processes while inhibiting others. The subsequent discourse not only delimits what can be said, it also empowers some to speak authoritatively on the topic in question. In many respects, those perceived to be well versed in the “best practices” are sanctioned by their community to create suitable representations that in turn shape and form an accepted worldview. Usually one finds such grandiloquence in the emotionally charged worlds of politics and religion and would normally not expect to encounter it in the staid, mechanistic realm of factory work. Nevertheless, under the guise of “World Class Manufacturing (WCM) Best Practices” there has been a concerted effort to mold industrial operations in the hegemonic manner described above. In the early 1980’s the poor alignment of production activities, caused in part by an overly rigid division of labor and the accompanying complex shop floor layouts, were leading explanations for the subpar performance of US manufacturing on the world stage (Deming, 1986). WCM innovations were designed to alleviate, if not eliminate, this adverse situation and thereby restore US manufacturing prowess (Schonberger, 1986). This point of view calls for the adoption of organizational precepts that significantly alter the coordination mechanisms within a production facility. These practices are typified by terms such as total quality (Oakland, 1993; Cole, Bacdayan, and White, 1993), lean manufacturing/just-in-time (Lillrank, 1995; Womack and Jones, 1996), cross-disciplinary teams (Dean and Susman, 1989), benchmarking (Watson, 1993), and cellular manufacturing (Chase and Aquilano, 1995). In constructing a production facility along these lines as opposed to any other, certain courses of action are invited and others discouraged. Through this particular discourse senior managers and/or consultants essentially attempt to define the normative expectations of the employees’ role. I am not so much concerned with the elucidation of WCM per se, rather I intend to capture the meaning, as expressed through participant observation, that a local manufacturer has developed conc erning its internal operations against the backdrop of the latest production management thinking. Juxtaposed with this narrative, I will relate personal experience with the subject matter as experienced during my tenure with another manufacturing firm. In a final discussion section, a grounded critique of the WCM rhetoric based on these two sets of data will be provided.
Keywords
manufacturing industries--research--United States
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Lopez, Michael R., "World Class Manufacturing Best Practices; Do they play in Peoria? An Ethnographic Study of a Locally Based Production Facility" (2002). Student Scholarship. 545.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/545
