Since they were first developed, lean methodologies have grown in importance and scope and have been applied in both manufacturing and service. However, determining how to transform a common manufacturing company into a lean one, as well as how to evaluate the future company, are challenges for both researchers and manufacturers. This paper presents a case study of a lean manufacturing implemen...

Lean manufacturing impacts several operational performances. The usefulness of JIT links with suppliers is also well known. However, literature lacks strong empirical evidences to exhibit the relationship between lean manufacturing, operational performances and JIT linkages with suppliers. This paper aims to investigate this relationship. A questionnaire-based international survey was used to o...

This study presents a practical framework for introducing lean principles in small manufacturing shops. These shops are characterized by low volume, large variety and one-of-a kind products, accounting for a significant portion of the U.S. manufacturing industry. The potential challenges for adopting a lean system in small manufacturing shops are reviewed. An implementation strategy encompassin...

Lean manufacturing has been the buzzword in the area of manufacturing for past few years especially in Japan. The Kanban system is one of the manufacturing strategies for lean production with minimal inventory and reduced costs. However, the Kanban system is not being implemented widely by manufacturing companies in Malaysia. Thus, the objectives of this case study are 1) to determine how does ...

The goal of this research is to investigate how lean manufacturing tools can be adapted from the discrete to the continuous manufacturing environment, and to evaluate their benefits on a specific application instance. Although the process and discrete industry share several common characteristics, there are areas where they are very different. This research attempts to identify commonalities be...

One of the ultimate targets of lean manufacturing paradigm is to balance production and produce at takt time in production cells. This paper investigates the performance of a lean cell that implements the previous lean goals under uncertainty. The investigation is based on a system dynamics approach to model a dynamic lean cell. Backlog is used as a performance metric that reflects the cell’s r...

In the traditional sense, IT has often been viewed as a contributor to waste within lean production. However, as the business world changes and competition from low-cost countries increases, new models must be developed which deliver competitive advantage by combining contemporary technological advances with the lean paradigm. In order to make a contribution within this field of research, we ev...

The lean philosophy, which denotes business excellence through continuous improvement, originates from Japanese car manufacturer Toyota’s Production System (TPS). An area where lean is not fully explored is remanufacturing, a business that brings used products back to useful life. Remanufacturing is often a more complex process than manufacturing due to uncertainty of process steps/time and par...