Abstract

In today’s global competitive situation, every industry (irrespective of its size) is compelled to optimize their production processes, with a focus on delivering high-quality products in most cost-effective and efficient manner while ensuring swift delivery. This is continuously forcing every industry for adopting diverse manufacturing strategies. Lean Production System (LPS) is one such manufacturing strategy can be adopted and monitored continuously to eliminate non-value activities, thereby facilitating the efficient and swift production of cost-effective and high-quality goods. It is observed from the analysis of the literature that most of the larger manufacturing industries have successfully implemented LPS. However, in general, Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) often struggle to effectively implementing LPS. This is mainly due to non-availability of literature to indicate the list of vital enablers and ranking of the same towards implementation of LPS in SME. This study is attempting to address this research gap. To address this research gap, this study follows the research activities (a) identification of all possible list of enablers which would impact the implementation of LPS in SME, (b) determination of ‘vital enablers’ from the identified list of enablers, and (c) finding the ranking of the determined vital enablers by applying an integrated Multicriteria Decision-making Method (MCDM) approach. Particularly this study demonstrates the workability of the integrated AHP-BWM methods for finding ranking of the determined vital enablers for implementing LPS in SME.