From the World Class Manufacturing to the World Class Management: the Tetra Pak Packaging Solutions S.p.A Business Case

Today Tetra Pak® is the world's leading food processing and packaging solutions company. Working closely with its customers and suppliers, Tetra Pak provides safe, innovative and environmentally sound products that each day meet the needs of hundreds of millions of people in more than 160 countries.The current packaging portfolio of Tetra Pak counts on over 40 formats, each catering to a different consumer segment, that with the eighteen filling machine models offered, satisfy the needs of over 5000 client companies. In each of the 60 years of working of Tetra Pak, improvement has been the common refrain, leading to a continuous change and, above all, to a continuous commitment at each level and in each department. The main purpose of this work is to dip into the continuous improvement methodology implemented by Tetra Pak to reach and maintain its leading position in the food processing and packaging solutions market: The World Class Manufacturing before and the World Class Management nowadays. Based on a real personal experience in the company, I will report a critical discussion of the WCM theory and specifically of the methodology applied by the company in its non-manufacturing environments, the Autonomous Team.