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Abstract:
Since the introduction of lean manufacturing, organizations have realized sizable gains through lean process improvement. The resulting widespread adoption of lean led to challenges of fit across industries. Consequently, only 10% or less of organizations attempting lean implementation have been successful. Previous studies show that this unsatisfactory result, for lean manufacturing implementation, is often due to selecting inappropriate lean strategies, using the wrong tool to solve the problem, sole reliance on financial measures and consequent myopic performance measures, an overall lack of synchronization between lean goals and actual practices. Given the challenges of adopting lean and synchronizing strategy beyond financial measures, this paper attempts to resolve the confusion surrounding lean implementation by providing (a) a Literature review of lean principal, lean practice, performance measures and performance measurement system; (b) an investigating of lean principle to integrate the literature with a survey of lean experts; (c) creation of a lean conceptual map that integrates lean principles with lean practices and performance measures; (d) incorporation of the lean balanced scorecard as a performance measurement system based on validated performance measures obtained through a survey of different manufacturing sectors in the United States; (e) identification of causal relationship between lean principles using Decision Making Trial Evaluation Laboratory method (DEMATEL); This research will identifies paths for engineering managers to leverage the 80/20 rule by focusing on tools that sustain the most significant (main cause) lean principle.
Keywords
Lean process improvement, Performance measurement, Balanced scorecard
1. Introduction
The increasing strength of competition in the global market and the customer demand are threating and challenging companies in the international market. . Because of that, companies are exploring practical methods to increase their competitiveness by using advanced manufacturing systems[1]. Lean manufacturing is recognized as an effective approach for achieving and maintaining competitive advantage through an improved manufacturing process [2-5]. By applying lean manufacturing principles, organizations can increase value for customers while improving their profitability alongside citizenship behavior by employees [6]. Organizations aim to reduce non-value adding activity by using lean principles and lean tools. However, only 10%, or fewer, organizations are successful in lean implementation [7]. To this end, [8] indicates that less than 2% of manufacturing jobs in the United States are truly lean. Previous studies show that unsatisfactory...