lean thinking

From the eighteen-sixties, the industrial revolution, with its main characteristic of development of manufacturing management, swept across the world. Before the transition of production methods to new manufacturing processes, organisations faced problems relating to their effectiveness, speed of reaction, and flexibility, and these had formed a bottleneck restricting the development of enterprises. It was in 1950 that Toyota Motor Corporation first proposed Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing systems. Some years later, through its assembly with Kaizen, Total Quality Management, Total Productive Maintenance, Cellular Manufacturing and Six Sigma this would lead to the emergence of the Lean Manufacturing production system, which focuses mainly on the elimination of waste with the purpose of achieving more with less (Ballard, 2003).

It has been widely acknowledged that to become a lean organization there is a need to introduce a new management approach of a strategic, managerial, structural, organisational and operational nature. Firstly, from a strategic perspective, without fully understanding the scope and the value of lean initiatives, senior management may fail to see the importance of improvement in the operational area and to positively influence the whole company. The situation may even worsen as companies are unwilling to commit to “lean” as a long term goal (Roggenhofer, 2004). Secondly, some case studies reveal that the consequences of late implementation are poor project planning and a lack of management involvement. Thirdly, Benedetto (2007) claims that “lean” cannot succeed without a supportive human resource policy, in which all team members are encouraged to work together to create value for customers. Fourthly, in accordance with Hines (2008), a helpful organisational culture plays an important role in implementing “lean”. High performing companies place a heavy emphasis on developing a culture that advocates sustainability, continuous improvement