Enablers of Lean for Manufacturing Excellence: An Interpretive Structural Modelling and Analysis

Abstract

In the current competitive business world, the importance of lean systems has significantly improved. The purpose of the research paper is to identify key enablers of lean and understand their relationship dynamics using the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach with a goal to accelerate the pace of manufacturing excellence in industries. Literature review and focused interaction with domain experts facilitated in identifying 24 significant enablers. The analysis from the ISM has highlighted the strong need to focus on two clusters of four enablers each in the driving and dependent enablers quadrants in manufacturing. People-excellence-related cluster had leadership standard work, quality of people, functional expertise and lean training as the key driving enablers. While, the customer-driven cluster had supermarket pull system, demand management, process quality and value flow as the key dependent enablers. The research paper has provided useful insights and recommendations to industry leaders for accelerating their manufacturing excellence journey.

Lean in industry 4.0 is accelerating manufacturing excellence – A DEMATEL analysis

“…The selection of traditional lean factors was based on the paper by Ojha (2021). The three reasons for the selection being based on this paper were – it has been a recent year (2021) journal paper, it has a comprehensive list of 24 traditional lean enablers culled from 30 and it provides a healthy set of references of the 23 lean enablers.…”

“…A total of 24 traditional lean enablers referred in research paper (Ojha, 2021) were restudied for commonality/overlap and for relevance in current industries by the five experts mentioned in Table 1. The expert team decided to merge the following eight factors – 5S, visual management, standard work, loss time analysis, problem solving, training and development, self-directed team work and project management orientation into the much wider one factor CIC.…”

“…It immensely facilitated the visualization of the value streams from raw material to the finished goods delivery to customer in the industry and thereby reduced waste. A comprehensive set of 24 traditional lean enablers (Ojha, 2021) were analyzed using the ISM (interpretive structural modeling) approach. The cluster with dominant lean driving power had primarily people related factors, while the cluster with high dependence power had factors like value flow management, process quality and customer demand management (CDM).…”

Manufacturing excellence using lean systems – a case of an automotive aggregate manufacturing plant in India

“…Different manufacturing excellence strategies have been implemented in industries across the world over the last four decades to stay ahead in competition. Some of the prominent strategies from are: Production process strategy, Just-in-Time approach, Business Process Re-engineering (Zairi and Sinclair, 1995), Total Quality Management (Fraser et al , 2013), Six-sigma (Pranckevicius et al , 2008), ISO certification (Wither and Ibrahimpour, 2001), Lean manufacturing systems (Ojha, 2021), Value Flow analysis (Singh and Singh, 2013) and Industry 4.0 (Tjahjono et al , 2017). Each have their strengths and weaknesses with reference to its ease of implementation and business outcomes generated.…”

“…Understanding the relationship dynamics between the enablers (Sharma et al , 2016) has always helped the industry practitioner in implementing lean systems effectively. An exhaustive list of 24 lean enablers/tools (Ojha, 2021) have been identified and analysed for implementation in manufacturing industries.…”