Assessing Lean Adoption in Food Companies: The Case of Morocco

Abstract

Many studies have been conducted on the improvement of operational performance through the implementation of lean manufacturing in the agri-food industries in developed countries. However, only a few have been carried out in Morocco. This approach is not just suitable for the automotive or other specific sectors of the discrete industry; it can now be adapted to other industries, provided that the characteristics of the field of application and the selection of best practices that suit them are taken into consideration. The purpose of this study is to determine the current state of the lean principles adopted by Moroccan food companies (small, medium, and large-sized enterprises). Nine food businesses were contacted, and interviews were conducted with their quality systems managers, operations managers, and chief executives using a structured questionnaire. Results reveal that companies are aware of the importance of continuous improvement tools. Moreover, they partially adopt lean practices, even if they do not call them "lean". Such an encouraging environment, including the implementation of the quality approach and performance assessment tools (dashboard), can be a preamble to the implementation of a lean approach by these organizations. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the application of lean practices in Moroccan food companies.

Strategy creation behaviour and “last gasp” digitalization as predictors of sales performance and cash flow

“…Morocco's emergence has been put down to the gradual liberalization and privatization of public services that commenced in 1993 (Kauffman and Wegner, 2007). Country-wide SME activity was particularly accelerated by the 2005 National Pact for Industrial Emergence and the 2014-2020 Industrial Acceleration Plan which provided technical assistance to firms and financed infrastructure upgrades (El-Haddad, 2020;Farissi et al, 2020). Sectorwise, Morocco is known for undertaking manufacturing, retail and service activities (Cammett, 2007).…”

Lean Optimization Techniques for Improvement of Production Flows and Logistics Management: The Case Study of a Fruits Distribution Center

“…Studies such as Lehtinen and Torkko [45], Jiménez et al [46], Dora et al [47], Wesana et al [48], Hmidach et al [49], Rojas-Benites et al [50], Somasundaram et al [31], Farissi et al [51], and Ali [52] proved that Lean practices are significantly beneficial through improvements such as: service and product value creation, production efficiency, increased employee involvement, team spirit, coordination between production and maintenance, and waste reduction, production cost reduction, optimization of storage area and stock control, and reduction of setup and lead time.…”

“…They also highlight the urgency in eliminating waste that is strongly aligned with the agricultural need to reduce operational waste, whether in the form of inefficient labor used, food waste, water, or energy [43]. This idea was reinforced by the previously mentioned studies (Lehtinen and Torkko [45], Jiménez et al [46], Dora et al [47], Wesana et al [48], Hmidach et al [49], Rojas-Benites et al [50], Somasundaram et al [31], Farissi et al [51], and Ali [52]) in which they proved that despite being a peculiar sector, the application of the Lean philosophy has grown exponentially. The excellent and promising results of the pioneering initiatives applied Agribusiness demonstrate that this management philosophy can contribute to several fields of application, as well as allow the creation of synergies to enhance results and improve the management of available resources (financial and human).…”

Lean Service management model to reduce canceled orders in a fast-food company

“…It is important to mention that there are several case studies on the application of Lean methodology in the fast-food industry, as is the case of authors [14], [35], [36] among others. However, studies on the PDCA cycle in this sector are not very frequent; on the contrary, it is more used in similar sectors or other industries.…”

“…Figure 1. Proposed Model adapted from [14], [22], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39] The contribution of this proposed model is to implement and validate the Lean-PDCA methodology in a new scenario, whose information of the tools that contain them is limited and little studied in the literature of the fast-food subsector, and in this way set a precedent that will be used as a case study to help reduce the rates of cancelled orders in the production chain of the different fast-food companies, through improvement opportunities.…”