Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediation effect of Blue Ocean Leadership (BOL) activities between lean manufacturing (LM) practices and firm performance.

This study applied sequential mixed method with expert opinion in the first stage and cross-sectional survey from automotive vendor companies in the second stage. The samples were drawn using random sampling procedure from automotive vendor companies in Malaysia with the final number of respondents of 64. Four main hypotheses were developed and tested statistically by applying multivariate data analysis using SmartPLS3.0 SEM software.

The results provide evidence that LM practices have positive and significant impact on firm performance. Moreover, activities of Genba-Kaizen significantly improve the firm performance by an amazing 30 per cent.

The data used in the survey represent self-reporting by mainly the top management in operations or production. It is recommended for future study to include middle and lower management level to understand the difference of their activities. Besides, it is proposed to extent the population beyond automotive industry.

This study contributes to the LM body of knowledge by identifying the relationships between the LM practices, firm performance and BOL activities. Understanding these will help lean practitioners especially the leaders in making better decision in both manufacturing and service organizations. Thus, increasing the staff motivation and engagement eventually contributes to the firm performance.

Although there are growing numbers of anecdotal and empirical evidences in favour of LM in manufacturing environment, there has been almost no theory-building and methodologically rigorous research examining the link between the leaders’ activities with LM practices and firm performance. This study is addressing such gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a definitive and insightful working definition of kaizen for practitioners and academics in the West through which they may better understand the kaizen phenomenon and its intangible but critical underpinning philosophy.

A phenomenological study of the utility of kaizen within in the bounds of active kaizen environments in name Japanese industrial organisations was conducted over a three-year period in Japan. The research explored how Japanese workers acknowledge, exercise, identify and diffuse kaizen in a sustainable manner.

Kaizen is found to be a broad philosophical approach to work that serves different purposes for different members of the organisation, where no universal definition appears to exist yet differing ideologies are tolerated. Kaizen in Japan has a considerably deep meaning: it channels worker creativity and expressions of individuality into bounded environments, and creates an energy that drives a shared state of mind among employees to achieve proactive changes and innovation in the workplace.

This paper competently bridges the Japanese-Anglosphere cultural divide in social and business contexts. It contributes to the development of practitioner understanding of the utility of kaizen in Japan through unhindered cross-cultural research methodology, enabled by researcher competency and fluency in Japanese language and culture.

Literature has shown that many companies fail lean implementation or is not able to sustain lean for a long time. Researchers have found that lean failures are associated with leadership, which is a key factor. However, it is not easy and a long time is needed to change the leadership, behaviour and traits. This study aims to introduce the Blue Ocean Leadership concept to address this issue.

A literature review is carried for articles related to critical success factors for Lean and Lean Six Sigma with a focus on leadership factors.

The Blue Ocean Leadership concept focuses on leaders’ acts and activities which can be changed with less effort and time. Seven categories of lean activities for leaders are identified.

Leadership is one of the many factors for the success of lean implementation. This conceptual study focuses only on leadership and it needs further field study for validation.

Blue Ocean Leadership provides lean practitioners and academicians with a new perspective for successful lean implementation.

To the best knowledge of the researcher, there is no similar study in this area. Thus, the finding can form the basis for further research for the benefit of lean communities, especially the small- or medium-sized enterprises with less cost and time.

As employees in the lower ranks of a Japanese company advance through the levels of management and seniority their role in day-to-day kaizen activities shifts from that of directly improving their own job, operations and surroundings to guiding, educating and facilitating understanding and practice. The emphasis of kaizen to the employee during career progression changes in an embedded, sequential and predictable manner. To a new employee, kaizen is a process to be implemented, something that is visible and largely provided through company training and job manuals, while not necessarily being fully understood. To the senior manager, however, one who has advanced up the corporate ladder, kaizen is tacit knowledge and accumulated experiences, and is seen as being more than just reducing costs, increasing productivity and decreasing lead times. At this point, kaizen becomes something invisible, something that can produce real influence on both the company’s profitability and the manager’s reputation. Consequently, what kaizen is actually changes from being a duty associated with employment to a matter of personal, group, collective, and organizational responsibility. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism underpinning the transfer of kaizen (acknowledgement and exercise) in the Japanese workplace that results in it being sustained across multiple.

Data were collected from research participants (n = 53) through a mixed-method multi-language field design comprising questionnaires and unstructured interviews conducted in genba, the workplaces of five domain-name multinational companies in Japan. Multi-level statistical analysis identified two largely mutually exclusive generational groups.

During their late 40s, employees were found to transfer their understanding of kaizen between the two forms. At this age, employees were identified to shift from being student to teacher; follower to leader; and disciple to sensei. This study identified how kaizen shifts from one generation to another; when kaizen shifts through the change in responsibility of employees; and changes in the understanding and practice that creates sustained business excellence.

Importantly, the study reveals how kaizen itself is a sustainable business activity in the workplace, one that Western business is struggling to emulate.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how Toyota deploys Lean Manufacturing and Toyota Production System (TPS) for their automotive parts’ suppliers in Philippines based on the case study and the literature review.

The methods to better understand how Toyota donates Lean Manufacturing to develop their suppliers include to review the general Lean thinking process and tools and study in depth the selected Lean manufacturing tools that are directly related with Toyota supplier development and to show the actual implementations base in the case of the supplier of Toyota in Philippines.

The result of the case study shows how Toyota donates their Lean manufacturing (TPS) methods to the suppliers. There are several procedures and various tools for the Lean process. But one procedure within the process and only some of the Lean tools are suitable for supplier development. The case shows that all improvements (Kaizen) during the Lean implementation should be directly intertwined onsite (Genba) and just a small amount of the Lean tools is needed in real-world situations. In other words, the consultation of the Lean implementation might not require the full package of the Lean implementations. More importantly, the consultations of the Lean implementation without deeply understanding the onsite are useless.

The project for the Lean deployment for supplier implementation is targeted to understand the full procedure from the start to the end, but the case in this paper is only covering the setup phase. As the suppliers of Toyota, there are additional parts to be implemented (i.e. shipping management), but it is not covered in this paper.

There are some researches about Lean implementation framework, and only few cases deal with the actual Lean implementations. But the case about the Lean implementation of supplier development initiation which aligned with the Toyota Company is unique.

The purpose of this paper is to compare principles from the original Toyota Production System (TPS), the Toyota Way 2001 and Kaizen philosophy with principles derived from Japanese Zen Buddhism. The paper would also like to enlarge the debate concerning some lessons learnt from Japanese culture in order to avoid Lean implementation failures.

The original English version of Taiichi Ohno’s book dedicated to the TPS, the Toyota Way 2001 and other relevant papers regarding Kaizen were reviewed and analyzed. The principles that emerged from the review of this literature were then compared with similar philosophical principles from Japanese Soto Zen Buddhism. The literature concerning Zen philosophy was methodically analyzed and categorized using the content analysis.

The results of this research show many theoretical parallelisms as well as lessons for practitioners, in particular referring to principles such as Jidoka, just-in-time, waste identification and elimination, challenge, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, respect for people and teamwork.

Analysis and results are mainly based on the literature that was found, reviewed and categorized, along with the knowledge of authors on Zen philosophy. Results could differ depending on the literature reviewed and categorized.

The results of this research bring food for thought to practitioners in terms of lessons learnt from Japanese culture, Toyota principles and management style in order to avoid Lean implementation failures.

This is one of the first papers which compares Lean-TPS and Kaizen principles with the Zen philosophy to try to learn lessons for succeeding in Lean implementation.