The implementation of world class manufacturing techniques in Egyptian manufacturing firms

• The most important variables that promote the implementation of WCM techniques are “reduced operating costs (marketing and production)” and “global issues (environment-market).”
• More importantly, the results of this study indicate that poor planning and lack of knowledge are the most significant barriers to WCM implementation in the Egyptian manufacturing sector.
• rapid changes in business environment due to its unique characteristics, the raise of international competition among companies, shrinkage of markets, and iffusion of the IT through organisations have put pressure on businesses to continually review and adopt their traditional manufacturing strategy.
• Thus, in order to compete in global markets, Egyptian manufacturing necessarily needs to acquire world-class performance.
• WCM companies are those companies which continuously outperform the industry’s global best practices and which know intimately their customers and suppliers, know their competitors’ performance capabilities and know their own strengths and weaknesses. All of which form a basis of – continually changing – competitive strategies and performance objectives.
• WCM is composed of six dimensions: workforce skills and capabilities, management technical competence, competing through quality, workforce participation, rebuilding manufacturing engineering, and incremental improvement approaches.
• Schonberger (1986) provided a list of 16 principles of WCM which fall into eight categories: general, design, operations, human resources, quality and process improvement, information for operations and control, capacity, promotion and marketing.
• Implementation drivers:
• Perhaps, one of the strongest drivers is the increasing level of competition in the global markets.
• Also, another important driver is the never-ending needs of customers who are looking for better services and products.
• Finally, competitors’ use of the WCM techniques and their ability to respond to customers has a strong effect on the adoption of the WCM.
• Reducing costs by substituting the WCM for other traditional techniques is yet another driver for WCM use since it is associated with cost savings.
• Barriers to implementation:
• partial implementation of WCM techniques
• overly optimistic expectations
• implementation of WCM to conform to societal norms rather than for its instrumentality
• some of the prominent problems in WCM implementation include partial implementation, lack of a well-defined routine for attaining the objectives of implementation, cultural resistance to change, lack of training and education, and lack of organizational communication
• lack of a clear understanding of what are the fundamental and complementary manufacturing practices.
• companies that encountered failure in their program implementation neglected the development of practices that support the implementation of WCM techniques.
• The major barrier that will possibly affect WCM implementation is the inability of a company to coordinate its human resource practices, management policies and technology
• Findings:
• the most important variables are “reduced operating costs (marketing and production)” and “global issues (environment-market).”
• second factor, WCM barriers reveals the elements that are likely to detract from WCM implementation. Here, poor planning and lack of knowledge are the most significant variables.
• Conclusion:
• The Egyptian manufacturer should acknowledge that the aim of being world-class is not merely a matter of simply reducing costs; it is, in fact, the ability to link the manufacturing capabilities with market requirements to enhance the firm’s performance in order to satisfy its customers.
• Based on the results of this study, lack of employee education and training is the most important barrier to implement the WCM. Therefore, world-class practices should be implemented through a process of mature learning, and not be used as a quick fix reaction to a problem.
• Because, the implementation of WCM techniques takes a long time, manufacturing firms that are willing to implement them should be patient and persistent until the expected benefits of WCM techniques implementation are obtained.
• The Egyptian manufacturers must think globally. The consequences of not doing so would be a penetration of their own markets by overseas competition. They must also expect more complexity in business, products, and process.
• Policy makers in the Egyptian industrial sector should enhance the capability of manufacturing firms that are willing to implement WCM techniques through increased funding, grants, incentives, and educational programs.