In recent years the application of lean production principles has been forcefully expounded as the route to high‐performance manufacturing. This paper examines the relationship between lean production and performance empirically, using data from a benchmarking study of 71 plants in the international automotive components industry. The top performing plants (and their suppliers and customers) showed consistently better process control than did the lower performing plants. UK plants did not perform very well in terms of either quality or productivity, and links between economic context and manufacturing performance are discussed in relation to the U