Comparative analysis on leanness- competitiveness relationship among SMEs

INTRODUCTION

Lean-Global context/ advanced manufacturing paradigm-

What is lean?

Criticism on lean

 Operatinal excellence wrt business excellence (Demeter 2001)>>

 There is no general framework
 SMEs less studies
 Failure rate is higher
 Sustainance of lean

Lean implementation acorss context may vary>> lack of Empirical investigation

Purpose of this work

Key contribution

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

LR

Lean

Lean in different context

Context>> specific scenario in indian smes

Manufacturing competitiveness Manufacturing strategy and competitiveness Krisztina Demeter*

Leanness assessment (Vinod Chintha) Anand Gurumurthy Jasti kodoli, Sangwan

Leanness with competitiveness

Research Methodology

Research design

Research method

Future scope

1. Data collection
 2. Data analysis
3. Cross comparision

Lean manufacturing (LM) is mainly inspired by the Toyota Production System (TPS) which has
been focused on elimination of waste and improving customer satisfaction. LM is a set of
principles, philosophies and business processes to enable the implementation of it, which is widely
known and implemented since 1960. Taj had defined LM as manufacturing without waste. Thus,
the authors define it as a production system that focusing continuous flow within supply chain by
eliminating all wastes and performing continuous improvement towards product perfection. Waste
is anything other than the required equipment, materials, parts, space and working time.

In the era of competition, companies are looking for methods and tools mainly to reduce costs.
Several companies, use poor quality materials or they overload personnel with work to minimize
costs. They do not see other possibilities for increasing the effectiveness of the enterprise.
Implementation of lean manufacturing in any type of organizations can bring many benefits, such
as reducing waste and improving operating efficiency. However, lean implementation is not a
straightforward process. Although a number of frameworks have been presented, still many
companies find it difficult to implement lean. Furthermore, most of these roadmaps are for large
manufacturing companies, and not for small and medium enterprises. Unfortunately, there is not a
recipe that if used can guarantee a successful implementation. Furthermore, unsuccessful
implementation can have a great impact on organization's resources, but even more importantly,
affect employees and their confidence in lean philosophy. However Nevertheless, more and more
companies are realizing that one of the ways for costs reduction lies in improving production
processes. Therefore, they are looking for different possibilities of improvement.

Lean Management philosophy proposes a set of tools which can be used in company’s
development. The literature on lean focusses on large companies representing the automotive
industry in particular. For example, authors such as Dombrowski et al. (2010) highlight the
successful adoption of lean among large organizations. Nevertheless, SMEs can also benefit from
a conversion to lean, providing the process is adjusted accordingly. In this paper the we will
analyze the problems connected to the Lean implementation of SMEs. We also try to find
techniques and methods which have been or will be implemented by SME enterprises in the future.
The finding of this paper includes: the scope/type of Lean being adopted by SMEs, how Lean is
used in SMEs, the impact of Lean implementation on SMEs and the critical success factors for
Lean implementation in SMEs.

ACTION PLAN

Period Work Details Status

Week 1 Research paper Analysis Completed
Week 2 Research paper Analysis Completed
Week 3 Selection of Topic Completed
Week 4 Preparing questionnaire Completed
Week 5 Preparing questionnaire Completed
Week 6 Submission of report In Progress
Week 7 Collection of Data
Week 8 Mid Review
Week 9 Collection of Data
Week 10 Collection of Data
Week 11 Data Analysis
Week 12 Data Analysis
Week 13 Suggestion &
Recommendation
Week 14 Conclusion
Week 15 Making of report
Week 16 Documentation
Week 17 Final Review