Title: Development of a framework for implementation of lean manufacturing systems

Authors: G. Anand, Rambabu Kodali

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

Abstract: Researchers worldwide have proposed various frameworks for Lean Manufacturing (LM). A review of these frameworks reveals that many frameworks fall under the category of |design/conceptual framework| that provides information about |what constitutes LM| and few under the category of |implementation framework|, which describes |how to implement LM|. A further comparative analysis of these implementation frameworks reveals that they suffer from shortcomings. In this paper, an attempt has been made to propose a new framework for LM implementation to resolve these shortcomings. The main feature of the proposed framework is that the LM implementation is divided into several levels/stages. At each level, the associated tools/techniques/practices/procedures (referred as elements in short) of LM to be utilised are introduced. The proposed framework is only a conceptual model and needs empirical validation.

Keywords: lean manufacturing; framework; implementation; TPS; Toyota production system; JIT; just-in-time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMP.2010.029705

International Journal of Management Practice, 2010 Vol.4 No.1, pp.95 - 116

Published online: 01 Dec 2009 *

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