The survival of any organization depends upon its competitive edge. Even though Lean is one of the most powerful quality improvement methodologies, nearly two-thirds of the Lean implementations results in failures and less than one-fifth of those implemented have sustained results. One of the most significant tasks of top management is to identify, understand and deploy the significant Lean pra...

Lean manufacturing has been widely adopted by many production companies. Apart from the operational difficulty associated with conversion from a traditional, functional based operation, adoption of Lean manufacturing involves significant organizational transformations. It requires formation of work teams, comprised of multi-skilled workers. The work teams are preferably self directed and need t...

Experience has shown that as little as 4% of any business produces over half of the waste, rework and delay. Finding and fixing these pockets of dysfunction can dramatically reduce costs and boost profits. According to Authors Stalk and Hout in Competing Against Time, a 25% reduction in delay will double productivity and increase profits by 20%. It doesn’t matter if you’re a manufacturer produc...

Lean practices and principles build on a half-century of successive initiatives aimed at transforming social and technical systems in organizations. While they are seen as central to the revitalization of the U.S. aerospace industry, there is great variation in the degree to which lean initiatives emphasize just technical/manufacturing systems versus additional social and enterprise dimensions....

Lean practices and principles build on a half-century of successive initiatives aimed at transforming social and technical systems in organizations. While they are seen as central to the revitalization of the U.S. aerospace industry, there is great variation in the degree to which lean initiatives emphasize just technical/manufacturing systems versus additional social and enterprise dimensions....

This paper provides an extensive review of studies carried out in lean production environments in the last 20 years. It aims to identify the effects of lean production (negative or positive) on occupational health and related risk factors. Thirty-six studies of lean effects were accepted from the literature search and sorted by sector and type of outcome. Lean production was found to have a neg...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore if six sigma and lean are new methods, or if they are repackaged versions of previously popular methods – total quality management (TQM) and just-in-time (JIT). Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a critical comparison of lean with JIT and six sigma with TQM, a study of the measure of the publication frequency – the number of aca...

The annual (year 2001) survey of manufacturers conducted by IndustryWeek magazine, and reviewed by a national engineering society, indicates that the average manufacturing company is "just beginning its journey to adopt lean strategies". The review confirms there is a small but definite increasing trend in the movement towards the adoption of lean manufacturing techniques within U.S. plants. Ho...

Lean production (or lean management respectively) gained popularity in several waves. The last three decades have been filled with numerous attempts to apply these concepts in companies. However, this has only been partially successful. The roots of lean production can be traced back to Toyota’s just-in-time production. This concept, which according to Womack’s, Jones’ and Roos’ research at MIT...

The International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) have collected data in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2006. The paper does longitudinell studies on these data focussing on data relevant for Lean Management. We see that there has been an adoption of the Just in Time and Lean issues, but that there is still a way to go.