Lean Production and World Class Manufacturing: A Comparative Study of the Two Most Important Production Strategies of Recent Times

As a consequence of the rising competition in the markets and of the growing economic crisis that has affected most of the manufacturing industries worldwide, many companies have sought solutions to improve their productive performance. Because of this, Lean Production and World Class Manufacturing are the two most popular strategies which companies have tried to adopt with results that not always are most satisfactory. This Research Paper has the objective of identifying the reasons that may have caused the failure of these strategies, using analysis and comparison, to reveal their differences and the reasons why the full understanding of these differences is of fundamental importance in the choice between one or the other. The research period covered is that of the last 30 years (1986-2018) and the research can be classified as a systematic literature review, from a theoretical and qualitative point of view. The results of this paper show how, although the two manufacturing strategies share many common aspects, they do present some important differences, which can be attributed in some part to the different cultural context in which they developed. This paper also provides the tools for a better understanding of Lean and World Class Manufacturing literature and can be used as a useful support for further new research on these subjects.