The Impact of Employee Involvement and Empowerment in Lean Manufacturing System Implementation towards Organizational Performances

Abstract

Lean Manufacturing System (LMS) implementations in Malaysia’s automotive industry has not been extensive in its expected reach, as extensive inquiries revealed it being adopted as a “pick-and-choose” system for certain processes or only upon determined levels within the industry. Current implementation strategy does not permit the industry to gain total benefits from the system itself. Undeniably, a few significant factors are being given less significance in multiple stages of LMS’ execution. Employee involvement and employee empowerment have been identified as part of these contributing factors in a successful implementation of LMS in an organization. However, important criterion with its contributing aspects of these factors is not given the necessary attention, translating into a lamer impact upon companies embarking on a LMS deployment. This paper examines the impact of these two factors in the implementation of a lean manufacturing system towards achieving organizational performances in the automotive industry. A questionnaire-survey was administered to gauge the impact of these two factors in an implementation process of a lean manufacturing system and later analyzing the effect towards their organizational performances. Data from 204 automotive parts manufacturers were gathered and analyzed. The correlation between the influencing factors, 5 lean activities and 6 organizational performances were measured. The results gained suggest that the integration between employee involvement and employee empowerment will be a valuable critical organizational capability impacting organizational performances towards the successful implementation of LMS in the Malaysian automotive industry.