Track: Manufacturing

Abstract

Abstract— Since Pakistan is a developing country and awareness of latest technologies is one key issues in the industrial sector of Pakistan. This paper presents an exploratory study of lean manufacturing implementation in manufacturing industries in Karachi (Sindh) Pakistan. A questionnaire survey, based on five-point Likert scale, was used to explore the extents of lean manufacturing implementation. The survey was performed on eighteen manufacturing firms to determine the correlation among various parameters of lean practices. The respondents were therefore, selected from those that involved with lean manufacturing practices such as production and quality personnel. Results showed strong positive correlation between production smoothing with inventory management (r=0.64, σ=0.017), Value stream (r=0.781, σ=0.02), Quality (r= 0.618, σ=0.024), continuous improvement (r=0.740, σ=0.004) and setup time reduction (r=0.614, σ=.026) and between Quality with value stream (r=0.668, σ=0.003), Human resource (r=0.828, σ=0.009).  It was found that these firms spend more attentions and resources in internal areas such as firm`s operation and management compared to exterior relationships with the suppliers and customers. However, further research is required to overcome the limits in the current study and to validate the results by increasing the sample size.

Keywords—Lean manufacturing, Lack of planning, statistical analysis, Survey Questionnaire.