Track: Total Quality Management (TQM)

Abstract

In the present era of competition, industries are adopting lean manufacturing for successful survival. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of lean manufacturing in Pakistani process industries in terms of lean practices, reasons, and challenges of implementing lean manufacturing. A survey was carried out to assess the level of lean implementation in Pakistani process industries. 150 process industries were contacted, in which 84 industries were responded. Major process industrial sector includes food and beverages, chemical processing, oil refineries etc. The managers were requested to provide valuable information regarding lean implantation. The reliability of questionnaire is 0.935. Statistical tests were conducted to assess the significant lean practices, reasons, and challenges of implementation of lean. It is observed that the level of implementation of lean manufacturing in Pakistani process industries is still low. Results indicate that the process industries who implemented the lean found to be very useful to reduce wastes and to increase quality. These practices are concerned with to eliminate the waste and quality improvement. It was investigated that major challenges are reduction in setup time and lean experts who facilitate the employees for lean production. In the present study, the sample size is small and hence, the findings ought to be generalized cautiously. Although the study indicates that implementation of lean is useful for Pakistani process industries but to quantify performance improvements through adoption of lean requires increased research work.