The sun sets on REC (sometimes, no XPS in the world can retain your competitiveness)

The Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) has recently closed its second of two factories in its home country Norway. All the state-of-the-art technology and lean improvement initiatives in the world could not save the Norwegian factories from shutting down this year. The REC case is a good example of how benefits of process improvement programmes can be far outweighed by global politics. A natural question to raise is then; under such conditions – is an XPS programme insignificant?

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What is XPS?

XPS stands for “Company-specific Production System” [1], and describes a corporate-wide system that aims to improve and maintain a competitive operations system. Many multinational companies have implemented an XPS today: Examples are the Bosch Production System, Boeing Production System, Audi Production System, Lego Production System, John Deere Quality and Production System, Alcoa Business System, REC Production System, Electrolux Manufacturing System, and so on and so on…

Example of a typical XPS: the Electrolux Manufacturing System [2]

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