Company Self-Assessment of Lean Enterprise Maturity in the Aerospace Industry

Abstract

This study investigates the use of Lean Enterprise self-assessment in the aerospace industry. Senior enterprise leaders from 31 enterprises in the U.S. and U.K. aerospace industries utilized the MIT Lean Enterprise Self-Assessment Tool (LESAT) as a means for measuring their current state of leanness in leadership/transformation processes, life-cycle processes, and enabling infrastructure as defined by the LESAT. The empirical results suggest that the companies sampled from the aerospace industry in this study exhibit the lowest maturity in practices related to establishing and deploying a lean enterprise vision, even in the presence of high maturity in lean production within the organizations. Based on the self-assessment, a clear opportunity related to lean enterprise transformation exists in raising the maturity of these enterprises in understanding their current value streams and defining their future value streams. A framework for incorporating LESAT results into formal information feedback mechanisms...