Implementing Lean Production: A Behavioral Perspective

Abstract

Over the last decades, manufacturing companies have been exposed to increasing global competition and, consequently, the ongoing pressure to continuously improve their processes and lower their costs. Against this backdrop, the popularization of lean production since 1990 including the promise to reduce waste and significantly improve firm performance seemed to come along just in time, especially for the Western world. Soon, the lean philosophy, principles, and practices have been widely adopted by manufacturers all over the world and even an independent field of lean research has emerged. Numerous manufacturers managed to improve their processes thanks to lean, but up until today, still, many firms are having issues with gaining or sustaining positive results from the implementation of their lean programs. Among the most frequently mentioned critical success factors for implementing lean production are leadership and managerial commitment. However, behavioral lean research is in its infancy and has, so far, studied managerial behaviors and their impact on lean programs only superficially. After starting with a bibliometric study that reviews the full body of lean literature, this dissertation aims to fill the above-mentioned research gap by contributing two empirical studies on the influence of managers in lean programs. The first study of this dissertation takes stock of the current state of knowledge in the field of lean research. Various bibliometric techniques have been employed to achieve that goal and provide what is considered to be the most comprehensive lean literature review done ever. While citation and frequency analyses identify the most influential and active areas of lean research including past and current trends, a co-citation analysis draws a big picture of the lean literature knowledge structure. The second study analyzes how different managerial practices moderate the effectiveness of a lean program. Using survey data collected in the pharmaceutical industry, regression analysis is employed to study interaction effects between single social lean practices and the lean practice-performance link. The results yield both positive and negative moderators of that relationship. The third study takes a closer look at the hierarchical levels of managers and how individual managers’ perceptions permeate throughout the organization and manifest themselves in individual managers’ and organizational behavior. The results show that both top managers and middle managers depend on each other when implementing lean. This dissertation makes a significant scientific contribution, as it provides a comprehensive review of the overall academic lean literature. As part of the review, it indicates current trends, which can help shape the direction of future lean research and guide lean scholars. In addition, it depicts the landscape of knowledge groups within the lean literature, which can help researchers identify themselves with certain knowledge groups, but also open up perspectives for lean scholars to venture into new research directions. Further, this dissertation is – to the best of the author’s knowledge – among the first, if not the first, empirical lean study that investigates the moderation effects of management behaviors on the lean-performance relationship. The main contribution of the third study is a unique empirical documentation of perceptual differences between top and middle managers with regards to lean program effectiveness and how these affect organizational behavior and the success of lean programs. Besides the academic insights it yields, this dissertation also provides important implications for practitioners. On the one hand, practitioners can learn and gain inspiration from the bibliometric review about the manifold fields of lean applications and the current trends, such as lean’s application to support sustainability. On the other hand, this dissertation offers managers knowledge about empirically tested relationships between essential concepts for a successful lean implementation, such as specific management practices or organizational practices that help build a lean-supportive organizational infrastructure.