In January 2000, Mercedes-Benz started to implement the Mercedes-Benz
Prod- tion System (MPS) throughout its world-wide passenger car plants.
This event is exemplary of a trend within the automotive industry: the
creation and introduction of company-specific standardised production
systems. It gradually emerged with the introduction of the Chrysler
Operating System (COS) in the mid-1990s and represents a distinct step
in the process towards implementing the universal pr- ciples of lean
thinking as propagated by the MIT-study. For the academic field of
industrial sociology and labour policy, the emergence of this trend
seems to mark a new stage in the evolution of the debate about
production systems in the auto- tive industry (Jürgens 2002:2),
particularly as it seems to undermine the stand of the critics of the
one-best way model (Boyer and Freyssenet 1995). The introduction of
company-level standardised production systems marks the starting point
of the present study. At the core of it is a case study about the M-
cedes Benz Production System (MPS).