Acceptance of Taguchi's Quality Philosophy and Practice by Lean practitioners in apparel manufacturing

Abstract

We hypothesise that the customer value concept embedded in Lean manufacturing and loss to society concept embedded in Taguchi's Quality Philosophy and Practice (TQPP) jointly explain manufacturing performance, through the mediating effect of Continuous Improvement (CI). Using structural equation modelling, we tested our model by collecting survey data (n = 318) from apparel manufacturing factories that are mature in Lean implementation. Our model was found to be a good fit to data (e.g. Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .047) and this implied that our hypothesised theoretical model stays in contention. In addition, statistically significant structural regression coefficients implied that the Lean Manufacturing System explains manufacturing performance through CI while TQPP explains manufacturing performance only through its direct effect. We suggest possible practical reasons for these results as well as future research directions to further develop our theory.