Abstract

This article examines the various steps in the process of applying the lean production organizational model to FIAT Auto from the early 1990s to the first decade of the 2000s. It deals with the characteristics of World Class Manufacturing (WCM), the project promoted by ceo Sergio Marchionne in 2005, and interprets its arrangement as a variant of the lean production model. It supports the thesis that the tensions and problems of wcm cannot be seen as resulting from its being applied erroneously or not at all but, rather, from the corporate and organizational dualisms intrinsic to this productive model.