What does World Class Manufacturing mean?

I want to talk about world class manufacturing and what it means. A lot of people ask, "What does it mean to have a world class manufacturing system and a world class manufacturing approach?" Well, it's not that easy to explain, because world class manufacturing doesn't exist for real.

I don't want to sound too complicated and crazy. But if you think about what exists for real, like a tree, a bush or whatever. This is called the greens we have around us. You can see them you can touch them. But world class manufacturing is what’s happening in our minds. So it's all about how we think when we solve problems. And if you think about how you have built your production system today or your office system, the way you're working today, the processes you have. The way you work with them today is designed by you or people close to you with a certain mind-set in how you want them to work.

That's like world class manufacturing. The way you look at world class manufacturing is how do you solve problems? How do you design a process so you don't have losses in the process? And the loss definition is that everything outside of ideal is a loss. So, when you design a process or you solve a problem, your mind-set is about constantly reducing, eliminating and eradicating losses. It's also about working in teams, getting the best out of every person, help each other, be supportive, have a good link to the business. What you do when you are improving is something that is important for the business, not something you do for WCM sake. I say WCM because that's the most common acronym used for world class manufacturing.

So, what does it mean to have a WCM approach? It means that you create an improvement process that is constantly evaluating itself because; think about this, a world class manufacturing system is not new. Many years ago, when this started, let's say 30 years ago, the way we are producing and working has evolved since then, so if you have a good improvement system, you are also evaluating your improvements so that the way you improve, improves as well. That's why you have a good world class manufacturing system. It's a system that improves itself and follows some principles, for example. It's a baseline within world class manufacturing.

And it's important to remember, it's all about thinking in a certain way when we attack the problems. There are some benchmarks as well. There's some good ways of working that have worked for many companies and it's often good to have a look at to see if that could work for your business as well. But more importantly, it's to understand what your business wants and learn how to think in a world class way, and that is probably the most important part of world class manufacturing.

I hope this makes sense to you. If you have any interest in understanding more of how this could work for you in your business, please contact me. A free call or click on the link below. Let us know if you want to talk more about world class manufacturing. And like and share this article. I'm sure there are a lot of other people who would like to know more about it as well, and thank you for reading.

Johan Majlov, Founder & CEO Lean Dimensions International
[email protected]