Prospects and Challenges of Lean Manufacturing Deployment within Manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria: A Literature Review

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) played a vital role in manufacturing goods for consumer and industrial purposes, making them instrumental in business growth and economic development. However, issues of poor quality and substandard products prevail due to limited technical knowledge that hindered them from competing locally and globally in Nigeria—arising from the lack of lean manufacturing deployment and implementation. Therefore, the study aims to provide an insight into the prospect and challenges of manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria as it relates to the deployment of lean manufacturing tools and techniques. The study would aid manufacturing SMEs in better comprehending their potentials and problems, hence, deploying lean manufacturing initiatives successfully. The study applied a literature review approach through past empirical and conceptual studies from reputable journals and reports. Based on the available literature, the study finds that though manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria are faced with numerous issues, e.g., poor leadership, lack of qualified personnel, and inadequate funds , they have shown higher prospects of deploying lean manufacturing successfully. The study concludes that manufacturing SMEs should bank on potentials like flexible organizational culture and structure, easy access to customers and suppliers, and flexible manufacturing system to deploy lean manufacturing, which will further aid in waste elimination, value addition, customer satisfaction, and enhanced performance. The study serves as the foundation for further empirical research on issues related to lean manufacturing deployment within SMEs, thereby proffering solutions to the quality challenges they are facing.

How can the participation of private enterprises promote the high-quality development of state-owned mixed enterprises?

“…The lack of human knowledge and technology will reduce the quality of products, hinder business growth, and hinder economic development (Inuwa& Usman, 2022). From the perspective of capital market environment, stateowned enterprises have stronger strength in resources, talents, and technology, etc.…”

Proceso productivo aplicando el Value Stream Mapping en la industria del plástico

“…La competitividad del mercado orilla a las empresas a buscar metodologías que optimicen las actividades que añaden valor al cliente, recurriendo a las técnicas efectivas del Lean Manufacturing (LM) (Sanz y Gisbert, 2017;Sundar et al, 2014), lo que significa limitar las actividades esenciales de no valor, a la vez que se minimizan los desperdicios que causan debilitamiento no deseado de los recursos, flujo torpe e ineficiencia del proceso productivo (Huang et al, 2022;Vinodh, 2022;Inuwa y Usman, 2022). Así mismo, en el LM conjugan las mejores técnicas de la producción artesanal y en masa, porque su objetivo principal es aumentar la eficiencia de la producción (Martínez, 2021).…”