Lean Production in Austrian Industrial Companies: An Empirical Investigation

For the last two decades, Lean has been primarily used to improve manufacturing processes. However, Lean is now increasingly applied to a wide range of service operations as well. This realisation of Lean among service firms is an important progress, as there are potentially more benefits to be accomplished in this sector rather than in traditional manufacturing, where decades of good work have already paid off. To look beyond the manufacturing sector, this paper empirically analyses the difference in Lean practices as well as their relationship to firm performance between manufacturing and service sectors in the UK. Though this study supports the proposition concerning the applicability of Lean practices in the service sector, these practices need to be further adapted to suit service operations. Specifically, the empirical results affirm that service firms are interested in the soft practices of Lean such as people and customer involvement while they are found underperforming in manufacturing-related practices such as total productive maintenance, set-up time and supplier feedback. Moreover, the results show a positive relationship between Lean practices and firm performance in both sectors, also the degree of effect on performance was found to be identical between the two sectors.

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“…(Sohal & Egglestone, 1994;Doolen & Hacker, 2005;Tomas & Antonio, 2006;Wong, Wong, & Ali, 2009;Neumann, Kohlhuber, & Hanusch, 2012).…”

Section: The Origin Of Lean Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 97%

A comparative analysis of Lean practices and performance in the UK manufacturing and service sector firms

Alsmadi¹,

Almani²,

Jerisat³

2012

Total Quality Management & Business Excellence

115

109

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“…The first contributions were thanks to the work of Ohno, Womack and Jones in the 90's (Neumann, Kohlhuber & Hanusch, 2012).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modification to a process of making skewers in a company that produces meat products

Cano-Carrasco

Fornés-Rivera

Conant-Pablos

et al. 2019

JES

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This research analyzes a skewer production line of a meat processing company due to the fact that it presents bottlenecks and leisure time, with the objective of proposing improvements in the method through the analysis of operations. The procedure was to know the specifications of the product and the process, study the activities and determine standard times by the Maytag Company method. The results show that the critical operations are those of portioning and assembling the product for which three improvement proposals were designed whose evaluation determined that the mold method is the most suitable for the production of skewers. The chosen method is considered more efficient, since when compared to the current method, it presents a decrease in the operating time of 11.68s per product, as well as 7.88s in leisure time, resulting in an increase in production of 321.95 kg per shift, this represents an increase of 124.83% in the efficiency of the production line, making evident the relevance of these techniques for the continuous improvement of the processes.

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“…Leanness in a firm's value chain refers to its ability to "do more with less" and minimize (or eliminate) waste in its operations with cost leadership and cost performance strategies [61][62][63][64]. Agility in a firm's value chain encompasses operational flexibility performance and responsiveness to changes in information, such as product volume and/or logistics scheduling fluctuations [65][66][67][68].…”

Section: Objective (Ii): Value Chain and Supply Chain Management As mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most companies, by default, examine their supply chains and value chains from an "upstream to downstream" perspective (as a directional flow), meaning that they operate by creating the product based on capacity, with some concept of forecasted market demand, and "push" the product out into the marketplace and also examine associated value creation in this manner [77][78][79]. Neumann et al [62] conducted surveys of various companies only to find that even when it came to incorporating lean production techniques, very few companies used a demandpull strategy. The findings of this review are in accordance with those of Neumann et al [62], as only six (9%) of the 68 papers studied for objective 2 discussed the effectiveness of demand-driven management approaches [49,75,76,[80][81][82] (Figure 3).…”

Section: Demand-driven Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Neumann et al [62] conducted surveys of various companies only to find that even when it came to incorporating lean production techniques, very few companies used a demandpull strategy. The findings of this review are in accordance with those of Neumann et al [62], as only six (9%) of the 68 papers studied for objective 2 discussed the effectiveness of demand-driven management approaches [49,75,76,[80][81][82] (Figure 3). Demand Forecasting approaches were also considered by three of the six papers in objective 2 addressing demand-driven management [49,75,82].…”

Section: Demand-driven Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Review of the Wood Pellet Value Chain, Modern Value/Supply Chain Management Approaches, and Value/Supply Chain Models

Hughes

Shahi

Pulkki

2014

Journal of Renewable Energy

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We reviewed 153 peer-reviewed sources to provide identification of modern supply chain management techniques and exploration of supply chain modeling, to offer decision support to managers. Ultimately, the review is intended to assist member-companies of supply chains, mainly producers, improve their current management approaches, by directing them to studies that may be suitable for direct application to their supply chains and value chains for improved efficiency and profitability. We found that information on supply chain management and modeling techniques in general is available. However, few Canadian-based published studies exist regarding a demand-driven modeling approach to value/supply chain management for wood pellet production. Only three papers were found specifically on wood pellet value chain analysis. We propose that more studies should be carried out on the value chain of wood pellet manufacturing, as well as demand-driven management and modeling approaches with improved demand forecasting methods.

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Lean Production in Austrian Industrial Companies: An Empirical Investigation

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

A comparative analysis of Lean practices and performance in the UK manufacturing and service sector firms

A comparative analysis of Lean practices and performance in the UK manufacturing and service sector firms

Modification to a process of making skewers in a company that produces meat products

A Review of the Wood Pellet Value Chain, Modern Value/Supply Chain Management Approaches, and Value/Supply Chain Models

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