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In this paper we describe a survey of the current use and effectiveness of key modern manufacturing practices within the UK. The findings from the survey are based upon a ten-percent sample of British manufacturing companies employing more than 150 people. The most common practices in use are supply-chain partnering, total quality management, team-based working and integrated computerbased technology. By contrast, the least used practices in Britain are total productive maintenance, outsourcing, concurrent engineering and manufacturing cells. In terms of effectiveness, in more than half of the companies the practices are perceived to be failing to meet their objectives in terms of quality, cost or responsiveness to customers. It was found that practices such as learning culture, integrated computer-based technology and empowerment are expected to be used more in the future, whereas outsourcing, manufacturing cells and concurrent engineering are predicted to experience less growth. These findings are discussed within the paper in terms of their consistency with previous studies, as well as their implications for the current and future use of individual practices.
Waterson et al. (Thu,) studied this question.