5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December

12th–14th, 2014, IIT

Guwahati, Assam, India

Status of implementation of Lean manufacturing principles in the context of

Indian industry: A Literature Review

A. P. Chaple1*, B. E. Narkhede2, M. M. Akarte3

1*
Research Scholar, VJTI, Mumbai, 400019, anup.chaple@gmail.com
2
Head, Production Engineering, VJTI, Mumbai, 400019, benarkhede@vjti.org.in
3
AssociateProfessor, NITIE, Mumbai, 400087, mmakarte@rediffmail.com

Abstract
Today, principles and practices of Lean manufacturing are widely used by industries to eliminate waste and make
the process more efficient. Lean has been recognized as one of the key approaches in enhancing the productivity and
hence the competitiveness of an organization. This paper presents a review of lean principles and practices in the
Indian manufacturing industries. The paper contributes by identifying enablers & barriers in implementing the lean
principles and practices, methodologies used in leanness measurement of an organization in the Indian
manufacturing industry. Finally, the diffusion of lean in the Indian manufacturing industries has been given.
Keywords: Lean manufacturing, leanness, lean barriers, lean practices.

1. Lean Manufacturing: Introduction theory of constraints and total productive

The Toyota Production System (TPS) was developed
in Japan by Ohno and Shingo in 1940s and forms the
basis of lean manufacturing (Herron et al., 2008). The
mass production system existed in USA could not
affordable by Toyota so they focused on minimizing
waste in all aspects of its operation by using many
techniques and tools including Kaizen, cellular
manufacturing, poka-yoke, etc. (Herron et al., 2008).
Toyota was able to make better quality cars with
fewer defects resulting in higher customer
satisfaction. The Toyota Production System (TPS)
has been perceived to be a major rationale for Japan’s
competitive success and this system became
synonymous with the ideal model of manufacturing
for Japanese manufacturers and later to all companies
throughout the world (Yadav et al., 2010). The past
decades has witnessed the decline of mass
manufacturing system which was adopted by many
industries from Ford and the Lean manufacturing
concept is viewed as a counter-intuitive alternative to
traditional and mass manufacturing models (Lewis,
2000). Lean manufacturing was accepted as a new
paradigm that eliminates waste in any form,
anywhere and at any time, relentlessly strives to
maintain harmony in the flow of materials and
information, and continually attempts to attain
perfection (Yadav et al., 2010). Lean production is
broadly classified under the umbrella of process
improvement programs, which also include other
approaches such as business process re-engineering,
maintenance (Shah et al., 2008).
In order to provide an introduction to the concept of
the lean manufacturing, some definitions quoted in
literature will be given here.
The term “lean” was introduced by Krafcik to refer to
a manufacturing approach that (Papadopouloe et al.,
2005):
…compared to mass production it uses less of
everything-half the human effort in the factory, half
the manufacturing space, half the investment in
tools, half the engineering hours to develop a new
product in half the time. Also it requires keeping far
less than half the needed inventory on site, results in
many fewer defects, and produces a greater and ever
growing variety of products.
Shah et al. (2007) proposed the following definition
to capture the many facets of lean production:
Lean production is an integrated socio-technical
system whose main objective is to eliminate waste
by concurrently reducing or minimizing supplier,
customer, and internal variability.
Lean production gained the huge popularity after the
publication of the book The Machine That Changed
The World in 1990. Lean manufacturing attracting
more Researchers from all over the World, figure 1
shows the continuous increasing trend of published
research papers (source of published work: peer
reviewed journal papers from various sites
www.search.proquest.com, www. search.ebscohost.com,
www. scholar.google.co.in)
The paper is organized in the way, first introduction
of lean manufacturing; discussion on literature

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Status of implementation of Lean manufacturing principles in the context of Indian industry: A Literature Review

review on the lean practices, lean principles and lean
implementation, application of lean, then leanness is
elucidated. Finally the barriers to implement lean
followed lean manufacturing in India are discussed.
2. Principles and Practices of Lean
Manufacturing
Lean production is a multi-dimensional approach that
encompasses a wide variety of management
practices, including just-in-time, quality systems,
work teams, cellular manufacturing, supplier
management, etc. in an integrated system (Shah et al.,
2003).Yadav et al. (2010) identified ten fundamental
lean principles (Table 1) on the basis of exhaustive
literature review and authors’ industrial experience,
which further used for investigation of lean
implementation.

Figure 1 Papers published on Lean

Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing
principles
1. Standardization
2. Simple and specified
pathways
3. Teaching and learning
4. Socialization
5. Continuous
improvement
6. Supplier-customer
relationship
7. Coordination through
rich communication
8. Functional expertise
and stability
9. Pursuit for perfection /
striving for ideal goal
10. Cultivating
organizational knowledge
Table 1Lean manufacturing principles
What it means? Enablers
Standardized work procedure to do routine and repetitive Standard work
tasks to improve efficiency and quality. procedures, Design blue
prints
Flow of work to the right machine or person in the right Kanban system, JIT
form at the right time at the lowest cost with the highest
quality possible which reduces production lead time.
Through continuous effort of managers and supervisors Scientific methods of
acting as enablers or mentor in solving problems. problem solving
An atmosphere of trust, respect and common purpose in Consistency, consensus
which work is performed to improve efficiency and and communication
productivity.
Experimentation by the people at every level toward Kaizen, TQM, Six Sigma,
improving their own work systems. JIT etc.
Supplier-customer relationship specifies the form and Long term cooperative
quantity of the goods and services to be provided, the way relationship
requests are made by each customer, and the expected time
in which the request will be met.
Coordination through rich communication is required to go-see, involvement of
develop the idea into an innovation. suppliers early during PD
Every company depends on highly skilled engineers, Job rotation policy
designers, and technicians to bring a product to the market;
it is about developing standard set of skills.
It is a common sense of what the ideal system would be, Sharing a common goal
and that shared goal motivation to make improvements
beyond what would be necessary merely to meet the current
needs of their customers.
It shows the faith of organization that the skills and knowledge sharing
knowledge generated will pay off later. practices

Recently the thorough research emphasizes a broad
set of practices which frequently included under the
lean production (Shah et al., 2008), shown in Table 2.
The key aspect of lean implementation is the
marriage between lean practices and principles with
the strong commitment in pursuit of perfection
through perpetual learning (Yadav et al., 2010).
There is not a fixed standard recipe for lean
implementations; however Hines (2004) given the
Womack and Jones’s framework for the lean leap
(Table 3); defines a “one best way” which, containing
a good deal of sensible advise.

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5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December 12th–14th, 2014, IIT
Guwahati, Assam, India

Table 2Lean manufacturing practices

Lean Practices Sources

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Bottleneck removal (production smoothing) * * *
Cellular manufacturing * * * * * *
Competitive benchmarking *
Continuous improvement programs * * * * *
Cross-functional work force * * * * *
Cycle time reductions *
Focused factory production *
JIT/continuous flow production * * * * * *
Lot size reductions * * *
Maintenance optimization *
New process equipment/technologies *
Planning and scheduling strategies * *
Preventive maintenance / TPM * * * * *
Process capability measurements *
Pull system/kanban * * * * * * *
Quality management programs * * *
Quick changeover techniques / SMED * * * * * *
Reengineered production process *
Safety improvement programs * *
Self-directed work teams *
Total quality management * *
(1) Shah et al. (2003); (2) Bhasin (2006), (3) Bonavia et al. (2006), (4) Kollberg et al. (2007), (5) Upadhye et al. (2010),
(6) Duque et al. (2007) and (7) Shah et al. (2007)

Recently the thorough research emphasizes a broad
set of practices which frequently included under the
lean production (Shah et al., 2008), shown in Table 2.
The key aspect of lean implementation is the
marriage between lean practices and principles with
the strong commitment in pursuit of perfection
through perpetual learning (Yadav et al., 2010).
There is not a fixed standard recipe for lean
implementations; however Hines (2004) given the
Womack and Jones’s framework for the lean leap
(Table 3); defines a “one best way” which, containing
a good deal of sensible advise.

Table 3Time frame for the lean leap

Phase Specific steps Time frame
Get started 1. Find a change agent, 2. Get lean knowledge, 3. Find a lever, 4. Map First six months
value streams, 5. Begin kaikaku, 6. Expand your scope
Create a new 1. Reorganize by product family, 2. Create a lean function, 3. Devise a Six months through
organization policy for excess people, 4. Devise a growth strategy, 5. Remove anchor- year two
draggers, 6. Unstill a "perfection" mind-set
Install business 1. Introduce lean accounting, 2. Relate pay to firm performance, 3. Years three and
systems Implement transparency, 4. Initiate policy deployment, 5. Introduce lean four
learning, 6. Find right-sized tools
Complete the 1. Apply these steps to your suppliers/customers, 2. Develop global By the end of year
transformation strategy, 3. Transition from top-down to bottom-up improvement five
(Source: Hines, 2004)

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Status of implementation of Lean manufacturing principles in the context of Indian industry: A Literature Review
3. Application of Lean Approach
Lean manufacturing is not new in Automobile industry
where actually it born. After sudden success of Toyota
in 1980’s over the big three (Ford, General Motors and
Chrysler) and other Automobile industries, the other
industries started implementation to reap the benefits
seen in Toyota.
Piercy and Rich (2009) discussed the evidences of
successful lean implementation in service environment;
in call service centre to achieve reducing costs and
improving quality. Meier and Forrester (2002) found
that lean production practices can be successfully
applied to tableware sector characterized by craft
manufacturing. Abdulmalek and Rajgopal (2007) argue
the frequent application of lean approach to discrete
manufacturing than in the continuous/process sector.
Lean manufacturing has been applied within the process
industries, most notably chemicals and pharmaceuticals
sectors, to great effect (Melton, 2005). Sullivan et al.
(2002) discussed an equipment replacement decision
problem within the context of lean manufacturing for
inventory saving, floor space reduction, and high
quality.
4. Leanness
The term leanness is interpreted diversely in literature.
Leanness is the measure of lean manufacturing practices
(Vimal and Vinodh, 2012). Leanness refers to measure
its degree of commitment to lean production (Meier and
Forrester, 2002). Singh et al. (2010) define leanness in
context to assessing lean status of any manufacturing
firm.According to Papadopoulou et al. (2005) and Singh
et al. (2010) leanness should not be viewed in the
narrow sense of a set of tools, techniques and practices,
but rather as a holistic approach that transcends the
boundaries of the shop-floor thus affecting apart from
the production itself almost all the operational aspects,
e.g. design, development, quality, maintenance, etc. as
well as the entire organization and management of the
company. Wan and Chen (2008) refers leanness level to
the performance level of a value stream compared with
perfection which shows ‘how lean’ the system is.
Production is lean if it is accomplished with minimal
waste due to unneeded operations, inefficient
operations, or excessive buffering in operations
(Hallgren et al. 2009).
Meier and Forrester (2002) identified nine variables of
leanness, namely: the elimination of wastes, continuous
improvement, zero defects, JIT deliveries, pull of
materials, multifunctional teams, decentralization,
integration of functions and vertical information
systems. Meier and Forrester (2002) then concluded
thatlean production has been applied successfully to
craft production.
Wan and Chen (2008) developed a leanness measure
evolved from the concept of data envelopment analysis
(DEA) that indicates how lean the system is and how
much waste exists. Singh et al. (2010) developed a
leanness index by introducing fuzzy logic set theory to
the measurement method based on the judgment and
evaluation given by leanness measurement team (LMT)
on various leanness parameters such as supplier’s
issues, investment priorities, lean practices, and various
waste addressed by lean and customers’ issues. Vimal
and Vinodh (2012) attempted fuzzy logic-based
inference method and developed a conceptual model
consisting of three levels namely enabler, criterion, and
attributes to compute leanness level using IF-THEN
rules. Gurumurthy et al. (2009) applied the
benchmarking (BM) tool for assessing the lean
manufacturing; BM utilizes a systematic process for
improving the performance of product/service, process
or an organization as a whole by continuously
identifying, understanding, and adapting best practices
that are found either inside or outside the organization.
Doolen et al. (2005) developed a lean assessment tool to
assess both the number and the level of implementation
of a broad range of lean practices in an organization.
5. Barriers of Lean Manufacturing
Though lean is accepted by many companies for
sustainable growth by learning the Toyota growth story,
literature indicates that very less rate of successful lean
implementation among the organizations. Bhasin (2012)
found out from the literature that less than 10 per cent of
UK organizations have accomplished a successful lean
implementation. Though principles, practices and tools
of lean are backbone of lean manufacturing system but
there are other barriers too. Mere implementation of
tools, without having established an integrative system
that acts as precursor to lean implementation, is not
sufficient and it does not help transformation into
learning organization (Yadav et al., 2010). Yadav et al.
(2010) discovered in their study that many automotive
companies attempted to implement few lean principles
independently and been very successful in
implementing techniques like JIT, Kanban, Production
leveling, team building, quality circle, and other but it
did not bring them kind of success these companies was
expecting through lean implementation.
Sim and Rogers (2009) attempted to find out the
cultural issues as a barrier to implement continuous
improvement strategies and problem of resistance to
change. Sim and Rogers (2009) carried out a survey on
a Fortune 500 manufacturing plants located in the
Eastern USA; while thoroughly committed to
theconcept of continuous improvement, plants
hasachieved only partial success due to the persistence
of legacy attitudes on the part of unionized andhigh
seniority employees.
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Guwahati, Assam, India

Bhasin (2012) identified the prominent barriers in explains the factors contributing to the low numbers of
relation to the organizations size by analyzing total 68 successful lean conversions. The prominent barriers
UK manufacturing organizations operating lean which identified by Bhasin (2012) are presented in the Table 4.

Table 4 Barriers to implement lean

Barriers to Implement Lean Small Medium sized Large sized Sources
Organizations Organizations Organizations
Cost of the investment √ √ (1)
Insufficient internal funding √ √ (1)
Insufficient supervisory skills to implement lean √ √ √ (1)
Insufficient management time √ √ √ (1), (2)
Employee attitudes/resistance to change √ √ √ (1),(2),(3)
Insufficient external funding √ (1)
Insufficient senior management skills to implement √ √ √ (1)
lean
Insufficient workforce skills to implement lean √ √ √ (1)
Cultural issues √ √ (1),(4),(5)
Insufficient understanding of the potential benefits √ √ (1),(6)
(Adopted from Bhasin (2012)) Sources: (1) Bhasin (2012), (2) Panizzolo (2013), (3) Pingyu (2010), (4) Emiliani (1998), (5) Hunter (2004), (6)
Shah et al. (2007).

6. Lean Manufacturing in India 7. Conclusion

India is emerging as a new manufacturing This paper presents the review of lean thinking and
destination and many industries are seeking ways to its concept through definitions from literature. The main
excel their manufacturing capabilities by elimination of focus of lean manufacturing is to eliminate waste, doing
wasteful activities from their systems. Lean is one of the things better in half of the resources as mass production
approach the Indian industries are looking to become requires, providing higher quality with lesser cost. More
more competitive in local as well as global market. and more facets of lean manufacturing will come forth
Yadav et al. (2010) indicated in their study a keen as researchers are keenly bringing through continual
interest on the part of Indian manufacturing companies research. The good understanding of lean principles and
to adopt or learn new approaches and techniques in practices is required for successful implementation of
order to improve their performance; but it was only the lean as lean practices without knowing lean principles
beginning of a long journey for them. In recent study, can give short term success but may fail as long term
Panizzolo et al. (2012) investigated the adoption of lean strategy. The paper tried to present best way for lean
production in India (Table 5). The Indian Automotive implementation available in literature along with
sector has the very high level of lean implementation discussion that lean is applied successfully in different
followed by Electronics / IT / Engineering sector. Other sectors than automobile sector such as service sector,
sectors are seen on medium to low level. discrete manufacturing, etc.
The recent literature shows that the trend in lean
manufacturing for research now is focused on lean
Table 5Diffusion of lean in India assessment. Leanness attracts focus to answer specific
questions of managers responsible for lean
Industry sector in India Level of diffusion
implementation to assess the lean implementation level
Automotive Very high
and to justify spending over lean implementation. In this
Machine tool Medium to low
paper, presents the review of barriers of lean
Electronics/ IT High implementation from literature review. Understanding
/engineering the barriers is important for managers to avoid failures
FMCG Medium to low and to sustain lean leap. The future research may be to
Process industries Medium to low identify such barriers through extensive literature
Aerospace Medium to low review and interviews of working professionals as very
(Source: Panizzolo et al. (2010))
little work happened on this subject. The way forward
for research in this area may be multiple criteria

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Status of implementation of Lean manufacturing principles in the context of Indian industry: A Literature Review
decision-making (MCDM) for lean assessment to assess
lean performance holistically.The literature pointed
toward popularity of lean in India; but when it comes to
success, its only start of journey. Other than automobile
and electronics industry, others are having medium to
low diffusion of lean in India.
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