Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

An investigation on lean-green implementation practices in Indian SMEs using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of research on lean focusing on barriers in its implementation through a systematic literature survey. Design/methodology/approach – A literature survey of peer-reviewed journal articles, survey reports, master theses, doctoral theses and paradigmatic books with managerial impact is used as the research methodology. Findings – The findings derived from the evaluation of the publications analyzed have led to the identification of 24 lean barriers. The success of lean implementation will not be entirely based on application of appropriate tools and techniques alone but also on the top managements' involvement and leadership, workers' attitude, resources and the organizational culture. Research limitations/implications – This literature survey is primarily focused on lean implementation in the manufacturing sector. Practical implications – This paper explores barriers for successful lean implementation and provides a concise description of the bar...

Exploring barriers in lean implementation

India is emerging as a new manufacturing destination and many companies are seeking ways to increase the value of their products and services by eliminating unnecessary processes and wasteful practices from their production systems. The powerful lean manufacturing approach that has proved successful as an operations model in developed economies, as well as in some large Indian companies, is now increasingly being recognised by the small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this research is to investigate the adoption of lean production in India and to examine the lean practices deployed by the SMEs. The case study methodology was utilised and this article presents the findings of four SMEs in India that have implemented lean strategy to drive significant improvement in manufacturing performance.

Lean manufacturing in developing countries: evidence from Indian SMEs

Ranking of drivers for integrated lean-green manufacturing for Indian manufacturing SMEs

Competitive market is forcing big organizations to utilize the untapped potential of Medium Size Manufacturing Enterprises (MSME). In the era of outsourcing, MSMEs are the important links in the su...

Lean manufacturing system for medium size manufacturing enterprises: an Indian case

Introduction Business is conducted in a global economy these days, putting tremendous pressure on manufacturers to adopt advanced manufacturing practices to achieve sustainable competitive advantage for the sustainable development of the organization. The key to achieve sustainable development lies in the customer satisfaction through improved quality, reduced cost, reduced delivery lead times and proper communication. The purpose of selecting a suitable manufacturing system is to optimize the available resources to produce a world class product to delight the customer. In the 80s Schonberg contrasted Japanese and western approaches to manufacturing and coined the term World Class Manufacturing (WCM), which would flatten the organization, remove waste and enhance quality. World class manufacturing means "having the right production capability to make money from totally satisfying the customer, with high quality services and products at the right price delivered at the right time. Just in time, manufacturing resource planning and total quality management are all techniques to achieve WCM (Cammell, 1991). The changing economic and liberalized scenario consists of changes emerging from the ongoing reforms confronting to the WTO agreement and to the fast changing economic technological and information environment (Wani et al. 2003). The challenges of global competition can be answered through world class manufacturing. WCM is being worked on by many companies under several names such as Just in Time (JIT) or Lean manufacturing, Total Employee Involvement (TEI), Value Added Manufacturing (VAM), Continuous Improvement (CI) Activity Based Management (ABM), TQM, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) etc (Digalwar (et al., 2005). As per Koregaonkar (1992) JIT is a highly integrated production, sales and distribution system leading to continuous flow through the whole supply chain. It is viewed as a "continuous Flow Manufacturing". JIT calls for raw materials and components to reach the production operation in small quantity when they are needed and not before. JIT is a demand-driven system whose schedule authorization will be initiated by demand for the finished good. Demand may be an actual customer order or an inventory replenishment order (Bolander & Taylor, 2000). The application of lean principles is seen to be widespread: from manufacturing to service organizations and from job shop to the process oriented organizations. In their report Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development stated the term "Sustainable Development" seemed to take life with the Brundtland Commission Report of 1989. Members of the OECD agree that Sustainable Development stands on three pillars: economic, social and environmental. The aim of lean principles is to identify the waste from the system and achieve sustainable development through continuous economical, social and environmental improvements. Lean Manufacturing System Womack et al. (1990) described that lean manufacturing approaches were developed by Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno of Toyota in the 1950s and 1960s. LMS continuously identify and eliminate the waste from the system. Waste in Japan as defined by Toyota's Fujio Cho is "anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts and workers (working time) which are absolutely essential to production (Suzuki, 1978). The objective of Lean manufacturing system is to identify and eliminate the processes, resources which do not add value to a product. Eliminating waste in manufacturing however cannot be achieved solely through efforts in manufacturing. It requires changes in other functions such as product design, materials section, marketing etc. A company-wide integrated effort is needed for process improvement and waste reduction (Upadhye et al., 2004). Lean approach uses multi-skilled workers with highly flexible machines to produce highly varied products. …

Lean Manufacturing for Sustainable Development

Day by day the intensifying global competition is throwing challenges in the form of uncertainty and fluctuation in demand, necessity to provide wide variety to attract and hold the ever demanding customer. To survive and succeed under such competitive environment, organisations are forced to find and adopt efficient and effective ways for their operations. Organisations are seeking ways to increase the value of their products and services by eliminating unnecessary processes and practices from all systems. Lean manufacturing is a systematic team-based approach for finding and eliminating waste. The implementation of Lean manufacturing system helps organisations to reduce lead-time and inventory, improve quality, and achieve better on-time deliveries and utilisation of resources leading towards increased sales and profit through customer satisfaction. The Indian biscuit industry is the third largest manufacturer of biscuit in the world producing around 60% of the total production in organised sector and the balance 40% by the unorganised bakeries. In this paper, a medium sized biscuit manufacturing plant is studied under the framework of lean manufacturing system and observed that 5S, kaizen, quick changeover, TPM and TEI are some of the tools, which can be effectively used to improve equipment availability, reduce wastage of material and improve quality.

Lean manufacturing in biscuit manufacturing plant: a case

Organisations all over the world are seeking new templates for change to remain competitive in the face of globalisation. Lean manufacturing system (LMS) is a total business approach designed to identify and eliminate forms of waste in the process of producing goods, service or combination of both. Few factors (barriers) adversely affect the implementation of LMS. The objective of the paper is to develop a relationship among the identified barriers, selected through literature review and questionnaire survey by using the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) methodology. The paper also highlights the mutual influence of barriers over other barriers and identifies driving barriers (those barriers which aggravate other barriers) and dependent barriers (those barriers which are affected by other barriers). It is observed that lack of top management's commitment and lack of employee involvement is at the bottom of the ISM, indicating their strong driving power in the implementation of LMS.

Lean manufacturing system implementation barriers: an interpretive structural modelling approach

In this study, a systemic relationship is developed among lean manufacturing implementation issues, which are identified and supported from various literary sources, using interpretive structural modelling (ISM). ISM provides means to impose order on the complexity of the issues concerned. The decision-makers will be benefited by this model to design a framework to implement LMS. The paper tried to make the mutual influence of LM implementation issues more understandable as well as to identify driving issues (which support other issues) and dependent issues (most influenced by other issues). On the basis of ISM, a model for growth can be developed to gain sustainable competitive advantage.

Nitin Upadhye

Papers

Lean manufacturing system for medium size manufacturing enterprises: an Indian case

Lean Manufacturing for Sustainable Development

Lean manufacturing in biscuit manufacturing plant: a case

Lean manufacturing system implementation barriers: an interpretive structural modelling approach

An interpretive structure modelling of implementation issues for lean manufacturing system