Abstract
PurposeThis paper examines whether and when improvement routines are critical for implementing lean practices in small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs). Improvement routines such as “employees initiate and carry through improvement activities” are generally seen as an important means to achieve the full benefit of structural lean interventions. Womack and Jones (2003) suggest that these improvement routines should be developed as the company becomes more experienced in lean. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relative importance of individual improvement routines at various degrees of lean practice implementation.Design/methodology/approachA Between-Case Comparison Analysis (Dul and Hak, 2012) and a Necessary Condition Analysis (Dul, 2016) were performed on self-assessment data from 241 respondents at 38 Dutch manufacturing SMEs.FindingsThe importance of improvement routines depended on the degree of lean practice implementation. Lean practices could be implemented to some extend without developing specific improvement routines, yet certain routines were necessary for more advanced implementations of lean. These routines relate to employees conducting shared improvement activities and in the most advanced cases to aligning different improvement activities.Originality/valueThese findings question existing lean implementation models that neglect improvement routines and indicate the need to integrate improvement routines into every lean transformation for it to be sustainable.
Highlights
As small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises seek to increase their operational performance in terms of quality, delivery and costs (Slack et al, 2010), they can turn to lean management, which is known to increase operational performance (Womack and Jones, 2003)
To provide guidance for sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in this development, this study explores the relative importance of individual improvement routines at various degrees of lean practice implementation for increasing operational performance in manufacturing SMEs
The findings confirm that lean practices mediated the relationship between improvement routines and operational performance in this study’s set of manufacturing SMEs, and that individual improvement routines were not required for the implementation of lean practices
Summary
As small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (manufacturing SMEs) seek to increase their operational performance in terms of quality, delivery and costs (Slack et al, 2010), they can turn to lean management, which is known to increase operational performance (Womack and Jones, 2003).
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