Title: S-SMILE model: a leveraging mechanism to polarise performance in small and medium enterprises - an empirical study

Authors: A. Saravana Kumar; R. Venkatesh Babu; K.P. Paranitharan

Addresses: Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Agharam Road Selaiyur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600073, India ' Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Agharam Road Selaiyur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600073, India ' TVS Sensing Solutions Private Limited, Madurai-Melur Road, Vellaripatti, Madurai, Tamil Nadu 625122, India

Abstract: The economic development of a country is mostly based on manufacturing industries, wherein the role of the SMEs in manufacturing industries is considered to be more vital. The SMEs, which mostly depend on large manufacturing industries, are not able to sustain, hence could not achieve any long-term benefit. To address this issue, a novel effort is made to achieve long-term benefits by implementing the Lean concepts in Indian SMEs by deploying a research instrument to measure performance. This paper has been designed to analyse the performance of SMEs in India by a newly developed model, namely system for small medium implementing lean enterprises (S-SMILE). The model comprises of 12 critical success factors (CSFs) with 71 variables, which are analysed and validated through the perception of managerial executives. The results showed that the 12 CSFs of the S-SMILE model have a structural relationship and support the implementation towards attaining the performance.

Keywords: system for small medium implementing lean enterprises model; S-SMILE model; lean manufacturing; critical success factors; CSFs; small and medium enterprises; SMEs; performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVCM.2021.119397

International Journal of Value Chain Management, 2021 Vol.12 No.4, pp.309 - 335

Received: 14 Jul 2020
Accepted: 30 Jan 2021
Published online: 02 Dec 2021 *

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