Analyzing the Implementation of Lean Methodologies and Practices in the Portuguese Industry: A Survey

Carla M A Pinto,Jorge Mendonça,José L R Fernandes,Francisco J G Silva,Lurdes Babo

doi:10.3390/su14031929

Abstract

The mass production paradigm on which much of the industry was based has changed. The market is increasingly demanding, requesting diversity and products that are more and more adapted to personal wishes and requirements. This implies producing a greater diversity of products in smaller quantities. Competitiveness is enormous, which forces most companies to be truly effective and efficient, taking care of product quality, delivery time, and final cost. Lean methodologies have been a valuable aid in this field. The diversity of Lean tools has been shown to have answers to the most diverse challenges, and companies are aware of this, increasingly adopting methodologies and processes that aim to progressively reduce waste and adapting their production paradigm to what the market requires. This work intends to provide a vision, as global as possible, of the pathway of Lean implementation in the Portuguese industry. For this purpose, a survey was carried out with a significant sample of Portuguese industrial companies from a wide range of activity sectors. The data collected through the survey were treated statistically, and then a SWOT analysis of the results was performed, which provided a collection of precious information on the evolution of industrial companies in Portugal.

Highlights

Market demands have changed in recent decades, forcing companies to quickly adapt to new production paradigms [1]
We present the characterization of the sample and the discussion of the results obtained by the application of non-parametric statistical tests for independent samples
Mann–Whitney tests and Kruskal–Wallis tests were applied to each variable of each of the questions: “What are the results obtained with the implementing Lean in the company?”, “What are the main difficulties experienced in implementing Lean?” and “What factors do you consider important for the successful implementation of Lean Methodology?“

Summary

Introduction

Market demands have changed in recent decades, forcing companies to quickly adapt to new production paradigms [1]. The growing competitiveness between companies in the same sector increased the need for companies to look for differentiating factors to act in the market. This induced the improvement of the quality and diversity of products and a reduction in the waste that usually exists throughout the production processes. The later are pivotal factors for the permanence of any industrial company in the current market. In this context, Lean tools have shown to be a valuable aid. Developed in Japan to adapt automobile production to market needs after World War II, Lean methodologies were adopted in the 1970s and 1980s by the American industry, having gained particular prominence worldwide with the launch of the book, The Machine That Changed the

Methods

Results

Conclusion