Superfactory 20 - Top lean Company stocks

In late 2007 we held a poll to determine the public companies with the best lean manufacturing programs. We took the top twenty companies and created the "Superfactory 20." The following table ranks those companies from highest to lowest stock performance year-to-date in 2008, and also includes the S&P 500 and the Superfactory 20 Average, which is the average performance of the twenty companies. This table is automatically updated every hour.

Obviously the impact of lean manufacturing is just one of many factors that can affect a company's stock performance, however companies enlightened enough to implement real lean probably have effective leadership in other areas as well.

In 2007 these same twenty companies returned an average performance of 22.66% versus 3.65% for the S&P 500.

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• Click here for 2007 performance data on these same stocks
• Click here for the full final poll results and rankings

2008 performance is below. Note that if it has been more than five minutes since this page was last viewed it may take up to twenty seconds to refresh and display the table.

Note: Ventana Medical Systems was acquired by Roche and stopped trading. Therefore we have removed that stock which created a reshuffle of the top 20, and Kimberly Clark and Johnson and Johnson were added.

The following is the full list, and final rankings, of companies that were part of the poll. Keep in mind the poll only ranked publicly-traded companies, and used completely unscientific methods! The top 20 became part of the Superfactory Average. A brief analysis did show that in 2007 the top 20 performed significantly better than the bottom 20.

1. Toyota
2. Danaher
3. Deere
4. Parker-Hannifin
5. Wabtec
6. Illinois Tool Works
7. Caterpillar
8. Ventana Medical Systems
9. Hillenbrand
10. Honda
11. Steelcase
12. Textron
13. Intel
14. Stanley Works
15. Tesco PLC
16. Pentair
17. Boeing
18. Nike
19. Newell Rubbermaid
20. Abbott Labs
21. Johnson & Johnson
22. Kimberly-Clark
23. Coca Cola
24. Dow Chemical
25. Ametek
26. Tata Motors
27. Ruger
28. General Electric
29. Hewlett-Packard
30. Roper
31. Actuant
32. Harsco
33. Belden
34. Toro
35. Southwest Airlines
36. United Technologies
37. Aqua America
38. HON
39. Dell
40. Idex
41. Teleflex
42. American Standard
43. Ingersoll-Rand
44. McCormick
45. Trinity Industries
46. Regal-Beloit
47. Kennametal
48. 3M
49. ITT
50. SPX
51. Robbins & Myers
52. Masco
53. Tyco
54. Rockwell Automation