Interpretive ranking process-based lean manufacturing barrier evaluation

In the literature, diverse obstacles or barriers have been reported to result in the unsuccessful implementation of lean manufacturing in firms. However, little is known about these barriers' importance levels with respect to performances measures in lean implementation. In view of the lack of research and the importance in understanding them, this paper evaluates lean barriers in terms of their levels of importance in accordance with performance measures. The evaluation is based on a novel ranking technique - Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP). In the IRP-based evaluation, a group discussion technique is used to determine the most important lean barriers and performance measures; a number of matrices are developed for calculating the ranks of lean barriers. Upon validating the ranks, an IRP-based lean barrier evaluation model is developed. The model can help the practitioners better understand lean barriers and their levels of importance in lean implementation.

I. Introduction

Since mid-1980s, lean manufacturing (also simply called lean) has been receiving increasing attentions and lasting interests from both academia and industry alike [1]. With its dual foci: increasing the business value and eliminating the waste, lean has been recognized as one of the most popular business performance improvement approaches. The implementation of lean may bring companies many potential benefits, such as lot size reduction, lower inventories, improved quality, reduced rework, increased productivity and flexibility, reduced space requirements, lower overheads, decreased manufacturing costs, reduced lead-times, and so on.