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The purpose of this paper is to perform a systematic literature review (SLR) on lean manufacturing (LM) adoption in Malaysia while highlighting research trends and gaps from this literature. The SLR involved analysing 163 scholarly articles from international journals and conference proceedings published between the year 2005 to 2019. The articles are classified as literature review, conceptual paper, case study, and survey research. These articles were also grouped into nine meaningful research themes, named: (1) lean definitions, (2) sustaining lean adoption, (3) motivations to adopt lean, (4) lean benefits, (5) results from lean adoption, (6) lean implementation barriers, (7) lean success factors, (8) lean implementation/ assessment models, and (9) lean integration with other management practices. The review findings shall help scholars and practitioners to identify research opportunities, design their future studies and/or implementation strategies, accordingly.

Toyota Manufacturing Company revival after World War II and its survival during 1973 global oil crisis had inspired many manufacturing organisations around the world to initiate lean transformation. However, due to lack of clear understanding of the lean sustainability concept, many manufacturers are unable to fully transform into a true lean organisation like Toyota. In fact, without a proper measurement, the organisation’s transformation progress will be unknown and the specific gains made from lean improvement cannot be monitored. Hence, it will result in wrong strategy deployment in the lean transformation program. This paper therefore aims to theoretically define Lean Transformation Sustainability and propose set of indicators for measuring this concept. A myriad of literature related to theory and practices of lean manufacturing was studied to better understand this concept. The methodology adopted to better understand Lean Transformation Sustainability concept was based on steps to success in writing literature review by Machi and McEvoy. Apparently, Lean Transformation Sustainability can be measured in three dimensions; (1) lean elements momentum, (2) lean culture adaptation, and (3) enduring success. At the end of this article, the authors recommend several opportunities for future research that can be used for adding literature to lean body of knowledge.

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This paper considers a two-stage supply chain, consisting of a single warehouse and multiple retailers facing deterministic demands, under a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) policy. It presents a two-phase optimisation approach for coordinating the shipments in this VMI system. The first phase uses direct shipping from the supplier to all retailers to minimise the overall inventory costs. Then, in the second phase, the retailers are clustered using a construction heuristic in order to optimise the transportation costs while satisfying some additional restrictions. The improvement of the system's performance through coordinated VMI replenishments against the system with direct shipping only is shown and discussed in the comparative analysis section