Experience of lean application in higher education institutions

Abstract

Purpose Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of Lean; however, the Lean concept in higher education institutions (HEIs) is still not very popular, and these institutions face challenges in implementing Lean activities. The purpose of this study is to identify worldwide experiences of Lean implementation in HEIs and to share best practices of Lean implementation. Design/methodology/approach The research was conducted by surveying 34 Lean practitioners from HEIs. Findings This study outlined the importance of the complexity of the community and its processes as the main barrier for Lean implementation in the HEI. The study highlighted that Lean determined positive change in the institutions and that strong leadership, commitment of top management as well as good communication and teamwork were the keys to successful implementation of Lean. Research limitations/implications This study provides valuable insights and aspects of implementation and maintenance of Lean initiatives in HEIs around the world; however, a detailed analysis would require a larger number of respondents. Practical implications This study proposes that practitioners implementing Lean in HEIs should identify barriers, plan their activities and take into account success factors. According to the results of this study, managers of HEIs should deal with the main barrier – the complexity of the community and its processes. In addition, they should carry out employees’ and Lean facilitators’ training on Lean and ensure that the main success factors such as strong leadership practices, senior management’s commitment, good communication and teamwork are present. Originality/value This study adds to the existing knowledge on global experiences of applying Lean in HEIs.

Lean management practices perception and their influence on organizational performance in a public Higher Education Institution

“…Other factors are also suggested involving the creation of public value (Angiola et al, 2018), leadership and organizational culture (Ibrahim et al, 2018) and intellectual capital variables (Cricelli et al, 2018). Thus, these works demonstrate that performance in HEI remains as a knowledge gap in the literature and still needs further studies, especially involving Lean experiences (Simonyte et al, 2022). The present work explores this knowledge gap and advances by analyzing how the HEI Lean practices applicable to the public context influence the organizational performance.…”

“…However, in other areas, it is also common to verify Lean management initiatives, for example, in construction (Li et al, 2020), the public sector (Rodgers et al, 2021), in education (Cudney et al, 2020) and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) (Francis, 2014;Antony et al, 2018;G omez-Molina and Moyano-Fuentes, 2022). In the latter, the use and knowledge of Lean management practices and the Lean system as a whole are still not very popular, although there are many successful cases of Lean implementation as described by Simonyte et al (2022). Petrusch et al (2019) understand that the implementation of Lean management practices has been primarily focused on process improvements rather than organizational change based on this philosophy's values.…”

“…However, the fact worth noting is that few studies have explored this influence relationship of Lean on some kinds of performance in the HEIs context, such as quality performance (Mateos-Ronco and Mezquida, 2018;Mehta et al, 2019), leadership performance (Tetteh, 2019), student performance (Wiegel, 2019), processes and cost performance (Balzer, 2020). It may be because the application of Lean management practices in HEIs is still in its "infancy" and there are difficulties regarding metrics selection for assessing performance (Simonyte et al, 2022). Nevertheless, even without a cross cultural change and a general Lean implementation across the institution, Lean management practices may be applied to HEIs, as mentioned above.…”

Learning of quality improvement theory – experiences with reflective learning from a student perspective

“…If a current student project required other tools and methods than those included in the course, then they were free to search and find them (with the help of fellow students and teachers). Simonyte et al (2022), who studied lean in higher education institutions, propose that practitioners implementing lean should identify barriers, plan their activities and consider success factors. Results of this study revealed that managers need to deal with the main barrierthe complexity of the community and its processes, and the tackling of such barriers is a similar experience for most organizations (Cudney et al, 2011).…”

Soft and hard skills development in lean management trainings

“…In opposition, in active learning methods students assume an active role in their own learning, while mentors are responsible for guiding apprentices through the learning process (Ramires et al, 2016;G omez-Molina and Moyano-Fuentes, 2021). Surprisingly, few publications evaluate LM teaching methods in terms of soft and hard skills learning (Merwe, 2017;Simonyte et al, 2021), featuring a gap in both theory and practice. Based on these arguments, we raise the following research question: RQ.…”