Study on widespread adoption of Lean manufacturing practices in engineering goods manufacturing firms

Abstract

Lean manufacturing is a leading manufacturing paradigm with a systematic approach used to identify and eliminate waste by focusing on production costs, product quality and delivery and worker involvement The focus of lean manufacturing is to identify and eliminate waste by implementing lean practices and make the product flow at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection Today lean manufacturing has become an increasingly important topic for manufacturing companies as they try to find ways to compete more effectively against global competition newlineStudies conducted during the past decade on lean implementation found that the adoption of lean practices in manufacturing firms in India are very much lagging when compared to global counterparts Companies fail in implementing lean practices due to selection of wrong tools and implementation sequence There is always pressure on the companies to produce faster better and be less expensive with existing resources This can be achieved only through adoption of lean manufacturing practices As companies try to implement lean to respond to competitive pressure they tend to be one dimensional in their approach Firms cannot get the full benefit of lean adoption by neglecting other areas of manufacturing which will lead to failure in lean implementation It is clear that a more holistic approach is required for successful adoption of lean practices newline newline