| dc.description.abstract | This study sought to find out how companies are responding to these challenges by surveying the
adoption of World Class Manufacturing (WCM) by Kenyan manufacturing companies. World
Class Manufacturing is the merger of the best aspects of the world wide existing industrial culture
or initiative and encompasses other operation strategies like, Total Plant Maintenance (TPM),
Kaizen, Total Quality management (TQM), Lean Manufacturing, Six sigma and Just-In-Time
(JIT).
The study adopted a descriptive survey and involved collecting of primary data from a sample of
40 firms, members of Kenya Association of Manufactures (KAM). The data used in the study was
collected by a way of a semi-structured questionnaire.
The findings of the study indicate that the WCM principles that were rated as more important or
most important by most respondents included: total quality management, focus on the customer,
and focus on cost control, policy of continuous improvement, reduced product cost, and reducing
delivery time. On the other hand those that were rated less important by most of the respondents
included: reducing time to market, supply chain management and optimization existing IT systems
and investments.
The benefits that ranked top by the companies involved in the study included: reduced: lead times,
new product launched more quickly, vertical project start ups and improved compliance to
specification. The challenges that were most significant to a majority of the firms involved in the
survey included lack of understanding of the approaches and existing initiatives in place of World
Class Manufacturing. Nature of manufacturing facility, attitude of the board and attitude of shop
floor staff were also significant challenges. Minor challenges in implementation of this level as
pointed out by the participants in the survey included: lack of communication, inability to quantify
the benefits, cost of implementation and multiple business locations among others.
World Class Manufacturing is a term now becoming widely recognized in manufacturing and it
covers a wide range of activities. For majority of the firms involved in the survey their
implementations of World Class Manufacturing had already taken off, and were already reaping
the advantages of this concept. Adopting the innovations of world class innovations leads to drastic
performance improvements. However the reason why such a concept is not implemented is
because management fails to recognize the importance of World Class Manufacturing and the
benefits offered because of the lack of proper justification methodology. WCM is a process driven
approach geared to achieve a set of concepts, principles and techniques for managing and
operating a manufacturing set up and must be supported by top management | en |
