Lean Problem: Why Conpanies Fail with Lean Implementation?

Abstract

Lean thinking approach was reported in many papers to be very efficient and straightforward way towards process improvements in terms of p roductivity and value adding act ivities ratio. On other hand, it was also discovered that the system which is working very well in Toyota might not give similar effective results in other companies. Many manufacturers have failed in achiev ing success of lean th inking imp lementation. Cu rrent study is seeking the reasons of failures in lean thin king imp lementation. One of the proposals is that companies have to interpret their lean knowledge into own vision in form of lean house. Such proposal is derived from examp le of Scania, wh ich is one of the best examp les of lean thinking imp lementation outside the Toyota corporation. Study results indicate that success or failure of lean init iatives strongly depends on companies approach to it and on whether co mpany has created they own philosophy towards leanlean house.

The relationships between shop floor management and QCCs to support Kaizen

“…For the implementation of QCCs, previous research has suggested that their successful implementations are based on few factors (Miina, 2012;Seyedhosseini et al, 2011), including the number of ideas have been submitted (Karlsson & Ahlstrom, 1996), implemented (Baides & Moyano-Fuentes, 2012;Winfield, 1994), and the time improvement participants spent in developing ideas (Marin-Garcia et al, 2008). This study followed Ma et al (2014) that the number of QCC meetings is a proxy to measure the quantity of QCCs, whilst the number of completed and presented QCCs is a proxy for quality of QCCs.…”

Assessing Lean Implementation

“…This concept is based on the theory that every company has its own understanding of lean and should focus on its own production philosophy. A detailed description of the lean house is available in literature (Miina, 2012). Another approach is the implementation of lean accounting where the focus lies on cost reduction, while standard accounting focuses on cost maintenance (Schlichting, 2009).…”

“…2.2.1 Improvement #7 Continuous improvement: The concept of continuous improvement is crucial to keep a lean conversion sustainable and is mentioned as being the most important step in a lean journey by Miina (2012). It takes place in cycles, where an organization never stops to question its processes.…”

“…The use of benchmarking techniques helps to establish new improvement standards. By comparing processes, standards, or even organizations, improvement benefits can be made visible and they can be adopted to create new improvement standards (Miina, 2012). …”

“…The question why lean implementations fail is discussed in literature (e.g. Scherrer-Rathje et al, 2009;Liker and Rother, 2013;Miina, 2012). This paper focuses on finding a solution for these problems through developing an assessment tool.…”