The Implementation of Best Practices: Process and Performance Effects

Much has been written about best practices and world class manufacturing in recent years.
Various practices and improvement programmes have been suggested as best practices,
assuming that their adoption would to lead to higher performance. The implementation
process of these practices is, however, often neglected in the literature and, hence, relatively
poorly understood. The purpose of this article is to provide insight into that process and how
different implementation approaches influence performance. An analysis of the implementation
of a range of manufacturing action programmes in two companies showed that a broad
and incremental implementation approach initially leads to reduced performance followed by
a gradual improvement as larger parts of the programmes are institutionalized. A ‘big bang'
implementation approach does not seem to lead to deterioration in performance.