Analysis of critical success factors of world-class manufacturing practices: an application of interpretative structural modelling and interpretative ranking process

The aim of this article is to analyse the key factors behind the successful implementation of world-class manufacturing practices. Two distinct modelling approaches have been employed to examine the contextual relationship among the critical success factors (CSFs) and to rank them w.r.t. performance areas. CSFs and performance areas were identified through literature review and opinion of experts from industry and academia. Interpretive structural modelling (ISM) is used to develop a hierarchical structure for analysing the interactions among CSFs. Interpretive ranking process (IRP) is then used to examine the dominance relationship. ISM model highlights the importance of excellent top management over other CSFs, whereas IRP model revealed reduction in energy consumption and waste minimisations as the most important CSF when evaluated against various performance areas. This study also gives a comparative account of ISM and IRP and shows that IRP is a more powerful tool, as it goes one step further and considers the relationship of CSFs with measurable performance indicators.