Honda of America has developed a comprehensive approach to learning the principles of lean manufacturing its suppliers, in which Honda and supplier work intensively on improving narrowly focused projects in the plant supplier. Called BP («Best Process", "Best Performance", "Best Practices"), this approach has been very successful in improving the performance of suppliers, vendors participating in the program in 1994, the average increase in productivity by 50% through the reengineering of BP. Yet however, Honda has found there is a high change in the extent to which providers were able to convey the lessons of the line or plant where the BP intervention occurred. Based on the examples of the three U.S. suppliers of Honda, this article explores how the process of BP interacts with a broad relationship between the customer and supplier in terms of organizational learning, technology transfer and transplant Japanese management practices in the United States. These cases illustrate the dynamics of the learning process and the complex relationship that exists between "teacher" (Supplier) valuable knowledge and "student" (recipient). "Hide
by John Paul MacDuffie and Susan Helper Source: California Management Review 35 pages. Publication Date: July 1, 1997. Prod. #: CMR090-PDF-ENG
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