Evaluating Lean Performance of Indian Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Automotive Sector

Abstract

Under new “make in India policy” India has started to become global manufacturing hub and many Indian organizations are looking to implement lean philosophy to gain sustainable strategic benefits over others. Therefore, a need was felt to develop comprehensive lean evaluation system for Indian automotive small & medium sized enterprises in order to measure its present lean status and potential improvements to gain significant strategic advantages. Research started with the identification of various lean factors and associated sub factors through literature survey. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was applied to assign weight to various extracted lean factors and sub factors because of its evident merits. Fuzzy comprehensive analysis was applied to assess present status of Indian automotive small and medium sized enterprises, where lean does not practice. Lean performance of Indian automotive small & medium sized enterprises was ascertained as poor. The proposed model could be useful to guiding the Indian automotive small and medium sized enterprises in judicial selection of lean practices to gain significant sustainable strategic advantage over its competitors. Novelty of this research is to emerge from the development of comprehensive lean measurement model for Indian small and medium sized enterprises in automotive sector.

Lean manufacturing implementation in regions with scarce resources

“…Out of these 34 studies, 19 (65 percent) reported on a full implementation of lean practices (e.g. Dave and Sohani, 2019; Tiwari and Tiwari, 2018; Godinho Filho et al , 2016; Sharma et al , 2015). The remaining 12 (35 percent) studies reported on a partial implementation of lean practices in a developing economy.…”

Management and Production Engineering Review

“…The extant literature widely accepted that implementing improvement practices effectively led to better performance (e.g., quality performance) (Goncalves et al, 2019). However, Tiwari and Tiwari (2018) indicated several issues in adopting improvement practices related to employees' behaviour, such as resistance to change, lack of involvement, and lack of motivation.…”

“…With strong supervisory interaction facilitation to create a working environment where the employees perceive a safe and welcoming atmosphere for expressing their ideas for improvement, they are more likely to engage in process improvement programs (Stadnicka & Sakano, 2017;Tiwari & Tiwari, 2018). As a result, the manufacturing processes are quickly stabilised, and process variation is reduced, which is translated to the improvement of quality performance.…”

Revolutionizing Operational Excellence: Advancing the automotive industry through Lean Principles

“…LPP requires a highly skilled and adaptable workforce capable of continuous improvement. However, there may be a shortage of workers with the necessary skills, and retraining existing employees can be time-consuming and expensive (Tiwari & Tiwari, 2018).…”