Lean manufacturing: literature review and research issues

Abstract

Purpose – The advent of recession at the beginning of twenty-first century forced many organizations worldwide to reduce cost and to be more responsive to customer demands. Lean Manufacturing (LM) has been widely perceived by industry as an answer to these requirements because LM reduces waste without additional requirements of resources. This led to a spurt in LM research across the globe mostly through empirical and exploratory studies which resulted in a plethora of LM definitions with divergent scopes, objectives, performance indicators, tools/techniques/methodologies, and concepts/elements. The purpose of this paper is to review LM literature and report these divergent definitions, scopes, objectives, and tools/techniques/methodologies. Design/methodology/approach – This paper highlights various definitions by various researchers and practitioners. A total of 209 research papers have been reviewed for the research contribution, research methodology adopted, tools/techniques/methodologies used, type of industry, author profile, country of research, and year of publication. Findings – There are plethora of LM definitions with divergent objectives and scope. Theory verification through empirical and exploratory studies has been the focus of research in LM. Automotive industry has been the focus of LM research but LM has also been adopted by other types of industries also. One of the critical implementation factors of LM is simultaneous adoption of leanness in supply chain. LM has become an integrated system composed of highly integrated elements and a wide variety of management practices. There is lack of standard LM implementation process/framework. Originality/value – The paper reviews 209 research papers for their research contribution, research methodology, author profile, type of industry, and tools/techniques/methodology used. Various characteristics of LM definitions are also reviewed.

The change of production systems through consultancy involved projects: a multiple case study in Chinese SMEs

“…Bhamu and Sangwan 2014, Rich et al 2006, Panizzolo et al 2012, little has directly addressed the organisation's learning of LPS practices during external experts' like consultants' intervention.…”

“…It is evident that more Chinese SMEs will be encouraged to adopt new production systems like LPS through the use of management consultants in the future. The study is of academic significance, as LPS implementation in an emerging economy like China has received little attention compared to research set in the U.S. or EU (Bhamu and Sangwan 2014).…”

“…To better compete; organisations need to improve their production systems. Lean Production System (LPS), which can enable organisations to be more responsive to customer demands yet remain competitive (Bhamu and Sangwan 2014), has been adopted by many organisations (Shah and Ward 2007) to achieve this. The recent literature reviews of LPS show that although the predominant focus has been on manufacturing (Jasti and Kodali 2015) the application of LPS has been extended from shop floor level to supply chain level (Moyano-Fuentes and Sacristan-Diaz 2012); from manufacturing sector to service sector (Suarez-Barraza et al 2012); and from private sector to public sector (Pedersen and Huniche 2011).…”

On the meaning of ‘Waste’: review and definition

“…Yet although there have been many broad reviews on the lean paradigm (e.g. Hines et al, 2004;Papadopoulou & Özbayrak, 2005;Holweg, 2007;Shah & Ward, 2007;Moyano-Fuentes & Sacristán-Díaz, 2012;Bhamu & Sangwan, 2014;Jasti & Kodali, 2015), to the best of our knowledge, a review specifically on waste has not been presented. This is a significant research gap as the lack of a coherent and consistent definition of waste undermines both our understanding of lean and its effectiveness.…”

“…Most scholars would agree that one of the main principles of lean is waste reduction (e.g. Bhamu & Sangwan, 2014). But although waste is one of the most frequently used terms in the lean literature, it has been taken for granted that we have a common understanding of what the term means.…”