Abstract
Factors influencing the implementation of Lean Production (LP) in the company as a whole have been widely studied; however, there is a gap in the literature about the factors that affect LP in smaller units of the manufacturing system, such as Manufacturing Cells (MC). Hence, the objective of this study is to identify the factors that affect the implementation of lean practices in MC. We conducted four in-depth case studies, and the MCs were fully using 39 % (case 1), 6 % (case 2), 39 % (case 3) and 56 % (case 4) of the lean practices. Results suggest that there are seven factors that affect the use of LP practices in MC: (i) the reason for adopting LP, (ii) the experience of the company with LP, (iii) the need for involvement of the supporting areas in some LP practices, (iv) the interdependence of some practices, (v) the variety of product models produced bin the MC, (vi) the synergy between LP and MC attributes, and (vii) the size of the equipment used in the MC. We recommend testing the association of those proposed contextual factors with LP practices and performance metrics empirically with large samples of MCs or with mathematical modelling as future research.
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