Lean Strategy Implementation Challenges

Abstract

A Lean strategy is widely recognised for improving competitiveness in many manufacturing organisations. However, the majority of the organisations that attempt to implement Lean only on the shop floor do not completely succeed on it, as organisations face many critical factors like culture, training, and management support when implementing a new strategy. Hence, there is a need to address this topic of research. This research aims to investigate where potential breakdowns occur in the hierarchical levels within an organisation when trying to implement a Lean Strategy. The approach is based on findings from other authors and the variables of the study are linked with human behaviour. Moreover, the research contains data obtained from a questionnaire to analyse the perspective of two cases studies based in the Northeast of England and Mexico. This research consists of scheduled interviews applied to different hierarchical levels of the two organisations. The findings of the study will be used to improve the implementation of a Lean strategy in an organisation.