U.S. leads the way in competitiveness—and factory management

MANAGING: "The 'Same Ol' Is Actually Good Enough for Many: Usual Techniques Prove Successful For Productivity," by Scott Thurm ("Theory and Practice" column), Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2008, p. B4.

All that "lean," Six Sigma stuff really does work, a huge new study shows, and oddly enough, given our current gloom-and-doom on competitiveness (despite America being ranked #1 by Davos for three years running), our factories are the best managed in the world, according to this extensive survey of almost 5k midsize factories in 12 countries.

So the ranking is U.S., Germany, Sweden, Japan, Italy, UK, France, Poland, Portugal, Greece, China and India. But our lead is a small one—"flat world" and all.