A Systems Approach to Identification of Best Manufacturing Practices

If a company is to maintain its success in any market, it is necessary that its processes are among the best available. A best practice is a practice “that will lead to the superior performance of the company”. However, it should be noted that “best” is a moving target in today’s world, and it is also situation specific. Thus, it is important to identify the best practices in a particular organisation but at the same time it is vital to have knowledge of the environment in which the practice is “best”. Improvement in business and manufacturing practices should affect not only the processes themselves, but also the knowledge needed for the process, and the configuration of this knowledge alongside the process. This paper proposes a data mining based methodology to identify the effective process for manufacturing design. The methodology proposes an approach where the effective, good or best manufacturing practices are identified and the knowledge about these practices is stored for future reuse.