Now, let's consider two types of mistake that can occur when a manager actually starts to set up a duplicate system to replicate a successful process. Firstly, perhaps he forgets that he was just trying to copy another process, and starts trying to improve on it. Another mistake is trying to use the best parts of various different systems, in the hope of creating the perfect combination.

Unfortunately, attempts like these usually turn out to be misguided and lead to problems. Why? Well, for various reasons. Perhaps there weren’t really any advantages after all, because the information wasn’t accurate. Or perhaps the business settings weren't really comparable. More typically, the advantages are real enough, but there are also disadvantages that have been overlooked. For example, the modifications might compromise safety in some way.

So, what’s the solution? Well, I don’t intend to suggest that it’s easy to get things right the second time... It’s not. But the underlying problem has more to do with attitudes than the actual difficulty of the task, and there are ways of getting it right. These involve adjusting attitudes, first of all... being more realistic and cautious really. Secondly, they involve exerting strict controls on the organizational and operational systems. And this in turn means copying the original as closely as possible. Not merely duplicating the physical characteristics of the factory, but also duplicating the skills that the original employees had. Reliance on a template like this offers the huge advantage of built-in consistency.