Title: Performance measurement system for lean manufacturing: a perspective from SMEs

Authors: G. Anand, Rambabu Kodali

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Group, Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan – 333031, India. ' Mechanical Engineering Group, Engineering Technology Group, Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan – 333031, India

Abstract: Many organisations – be it small or medium or large-scale enterprises – are attempting to transform their organisation using the principles and philosophies of World-Class Manufacturing (WCM), such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Theory of Constraints (TOC). Managers in some of these organisations feel that they have not achieved the desired benefits after the implementation. One of the most commonly quoted reasons in the literature is improper understanding of Performance Measurement Systems (PMS) and its corresponding metrics by them. To resolve such issues, researchers have proposed various PMS for TQM, TOC, etc. But very little research has been carried out to understand the performance measures and PMS for an organisation under a Lean Manufacturing (LM) environment. Hence, in this paper, an attempt has been made to propose a conceptual PMS framework for LM. One of the distinctive features of the proposed framework is that it can be suitably customised even for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Keywords: lean manufacturing systems; LMS; performance measurement systems; PMS; metrics; framework; small and medium-sized enterprise; SMEs; balanced scorecard; BSC; taxonomy; competitive priorities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSB.2008.018101

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, 2008 Vol.2 No.4, pp.371 - 410

Published online: 01 May 2008 *

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