The Effect of Developing the Lean Product on the Lean Supply Chain: A Field Study for the Light Industries Company

Abstract

The Industrial companies are facing many challenges like shortening the product lifecycle, reducing production costs, responding to the customers' various needs, the markets' globalization, the competition's increase and swift developments in the environment of the business. These challenges forced the industrial companies to look for lean practices and tools to develop their products leading to create a lean supply chain that eliminates the waste of time, the cost, and inventory along with the supply chain. The research problem was formulated by introducing several questions on the impact of developing the practices and tools of the lean product for the lean supply chain, whereas the research hypotheses were subjected to several tests to ensure their validity. Moreover, a questionnaire included (48) questions was used as a main tool of collecting the necessary data about the sample in order to achieve the objectives of the research. The Light Industries Company was chosen as a sample of applying the research, and the statistical program (STATA- MP V15.1) was used to analyze the data. One of the important results which the research was concluded is that when the dimensions of the variable of developing the lean product (the value stream mapping and set-based concurrent engineering, the visual management and quality improvement, the computer-aided design and modular design) are separated and gathered again, they will have a significant effect on the lean supply chain's variable (the suppliers and procurement, the over production and warehousing, the transportation and customer).