Investigation of Critical Lean Culture Criteria Framework for Lean Transformation

Abstract

Many manufacturing companies when implementing lean manufacturing, they only emphasize on lean tools and techniques. They ignored the human factor or more specific they failed to build the right culture. Hence, these companies could not obtain the full benefits of lean manufacturing implementation, and in fact, they are having difficulties sustaining the success attained. This paper provides a theoretical lean culture criteria framework for implementation of lean manufacturing. This framework builds on the literature review that involves major sources of lean manufacturing community and also based on Toyota way culture. This study investigates how the lean culture influences the implementation of lean system in all organizations. The study further explains how an organization can benefit from assessment of their culture by adopting lean culture framework. It is found from the literature review that a number of factors need to be taken into account in order to implement a successful lean system. The framework would enable the organizations to assess their internal culture before implementing lean methodology.