Benchmarking best practice in European manufacturing sites

In 1992, when setting up a new consulting practice aimed at bringing IBM’s expertise as a manufacturer to the marketplace, one of the first requirements was to understand the market. Just what do the leaders of our manufacturing sites need to do to become world best? The “man in the street ” view frequently suggests that Europe has lost some of its former glory and that the manufacturing industry is in decline, especially if the numbers of people employed is any measure. More informed observers point to the obvious existence of some clearly excellent European manufacturers competing successfully on a world stage. International comparisons of productivity suggest strong progress, but not enough to change our position relative to the USA, Japan or even the newly industrialized nations. If there is a point of agreement it is that we cannot sustain exporting economies without a manufacturing industry, and that the capability of many European companies is not yet strong enough to compete against the best in the world. It was to understand the real issues facing European manufacturers that the “Made-in-Europe ” programme was undertaken. The goal was to test just how far European manufacturing companies had gone in implementing best practice, and to see what results they had achieved as a result. Implicit in this was the assumption that we could define just what that “world-class best practice ” comprised. One source of such confidence was from the simple observation that the much-documented pictures of Japanese manufacturing practices are so widely found on the bookshelves of European companies. The other source of confidence that best practice could be defined and modelled came from the internal benchmarking that has been common practice in the IBM plants throughout the world.