A STUDY ON THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES BASED

ON THE IMPLEMENTING OF LEAN MANAGEMENT WITH

RESPECT TO SMEs
LEAN MANAGEMENT

Lean Management is an approach to running an organisation that supports the concept

of continuous improvement, a long-term approach to work that systematically seeks to
achieve small, incremental changes in processes in order to improve efficiency and quality.

Lean management seeks to eliminate any waste of time, effort or money by

identifying each step in a business process and then revising or cutting out steps that do not
create value.

TOOLS IN LEAN

 Value Stream Mapping

 Takt Time
 Poka-yoke
 5s
 Just-In-Time
 Kaizen
 Kanban
 SMED(Single Minute Exchange)
 Six Sigma

SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAN MANAGEMENT

 Reduction in manufacturing lead time.

 Low inventory levels due to use of JIT.

 Integrates peoples & techniques to improve work place.

 Aids in more value addition to the customer.

 Aids in improving market share.

ABOUT

This study is about the benefits and barriers in implementing Lean management. Lean
Manufacturing (LM) has been revolutionizing the global manufacturing environment at an
unprecedented rate. It's focus on producing high quality products in the most efficient and
economical manner possible while incorporating less human effort, less inventory, less time
to develop products, and less space to become highly responsive to customer demands has
won the hearts of many organizations. With Lean Manufacturing concepts at work,
manufacturers can achieve extraordinary results.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

The Paper addresses what are the main challenges when implementing lean and how
do industry and company characteristics influence these challenges, will investigate the
problems that arise when trying to implement lean and what are all the benefits obtained after
implementing lean in different production or service environments. The subject of lean
implementation challenges has, until now mostly focused on general industries and company
characteristics. This paper tries to identify the challenges that are specific and thus applicable
to particular lean environment. Besides the general challenges, this paper has the goal of
identifying challenges and benefits that are specific to certain industries and company
characteristics. By doing so, more clarity to the subject of lean implementation challenges
and benefits will be possible for people studying lean, as well as for lean practitioners.

NEED FOR THE STUDY:

Through this research we can analyse and understand the challenges that are faced by the
industries in implementing Lean management. In Coimbatore which is rich in SMEs, hence
we can understand the barriers & suggest suitable solution to the companies.

We can also identify the benefits achieved by the industries after the implementation of Lean
management.

We can also come to a conclusion about what percentage of the industries implement lean
management.
OBJECTIVES FOR THE STUDY:

The Lean Manufacturing implementation objectives are to improve productivity and reduce
production cost.

Followings are some Lean Manufacturing objectives:

• Labour productivity improvement - Getting better work productivity by eliminating or

reduction of unintentional wastage of time.
• Reducing manufacturing lead Times - Lowering cycle times and hence reducing
production lead time by applying Lean tools to reduce production cycle and waiting
time.
• Inventory Reduction – Mishra et al. [22] identifies that reducing inventories between
production stations is essential to reduce inventory holding cost and working capital
requirement.
• Defects Reduction – Reduction of defects by application of Lean tools resulting in
reduced raw material requirement and reduced customer complaints in account of
defects.
• Increased production – Production is increased by reduction of cycle times and
manufacturing defects.
• Better Flexibility - Capability to manufacture wider range of products with reduced
switch over time.
• Improved equipment Utilization – Equipment are utilized in efficient way a by
eliminating bottlenecks in manufacturing processes.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

1. What kind of lean tools that they use?

2. How far they have implemented lean in their company?
3. What are the challenges they face when implementing lean?
4. What kind of waste management does they follow?
5. What benefit (profit/cost/production efficiency) they obtained after implementing lean
in their company?
RESEARCH MODEL:

LEAN MANAGEMENT PROCESS OBTAINED

TOOLS IMPROVEMENT OUTPUT/EFFECTIVENESS

LIMITATIONS:

1. The data is collected only around Coimbatore;

2. The survey taken is only in a specific industry.