In today's business environment, it is no longer good enough to be better than the competition down the street or in the local market place. Each company must strive to meet and beat the best from anywhere in the world. Manufacturing operations is one of the prime strategic functions of any business. The effective World Class Manufacturing (WCM) tools being implemented in the manufacturing system can control it. By this the manufacturing system performance will lead the business to a world-class status. The integrated tool model called Total Productive Lean Six Sigma (TPLSS) has been proposed by integrating the three major WCM tools: Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Lean Manufacturing (LM) and Six Sigma (SS), which are currently used in the industries. Adopting these integrated TPLSS-WCM model will lead the manufacturing system performance to a world-class level in a short time period with less investment. The integrated World Class Manufacturing Performance Tools (WCMPT) has been implemented in the continuous line (condom) manufacturing industry located in south India and the benefits have been explained in detail with respect to the world class performance elements like productivity, quality, safety, environment, delivery, morale, flexibility and cost.

Today's competitive environment of tight budgets, and frequent product turnarounds has made the managers and engineers in the manufacturing organization to strive for innovative and efficient methods of manufacturing at lowest cost with high quality. Due to global competition, majority of the manufacturing companies across the world have been using different tools and techniques to improve their operations. Many organizations have started restructuring their manufacturing and management practices (Farsijani and Canuthers, 1996).

The original meaning of `manufacturing' was to `make things by hand'. However, the present meaning has quite widened: `manufacturing' is the conversion of `design into a finished product' and `production' has a narrower sense, namely the physical act of making the product (Stickler, 1989). In this environment of competition and advanced manufacturing process, the success of a manufacturing company is dependent on its manufacturing system.

The manufacturing system (Figure 1) takes the input (material, energy) and produces products for the customer as output. The system must satisfy the needs of its users, the internal customers of the company. The products or services made by the manufacturing system go to the customer, so the manufacturing system must be flexible enough to adopt changes with respect to customer demand and desire (taste). The basic manufacturing system is shown in Figure 1.

Operations Management Journal, Total Productive Lean Six Sigma, TPLSS, Manufacturing Industry, World Class Manufacturing, WCM, Total Productive Maintenance, TPM, Lean Manufacturing, LM, World Class Manufacturing Performance Tools, WCMPT, Waste of Overproduction, Waste of Motion, Computer Integrated Manufacturing, CIM.