The Detailed Study of the Lean Strategy - Essay Example

This paper is focused on the detailed study of the lean strategy which includes a literature review that identifies the historical background and earlier development of a lean strategy. There are the three basic stages of its development, initiating from about 1850s, which then adopted by Ford system in the period of earlier 1900s. Later, after some amendments, the system was undertaken by the Toyota production system. This brought quality to the organizational systems and helps to accomplish an operational expertise. Distinctive hierarchical variables which are essential in the execution procedure are completely inspected. Critical success factors that improve the execution procedure are distinguished through human asset reviews, administration style, hierarchical vision of organizations, cultural aspects of the organization and external forces. Lean strategy directs the company to reduce or remove waste along with whole value creation channels. This makes operations that require less human exertion, less space, fewer assets and capital, and less time to manufacture items and deliver services. This process undertakes fewer expenses and with much fewer discards and operational errors as compared to traditional business frameworks. The main objective of the lean strategy is to give perfect and ideal worth to the customer through a sound value formation process that supports no waste. Further, the paper also outlines the difficulties that organizations experience when they change their plan of action towards executing another strategy and innovative system to the organization framework that is lean strategy. For superior understanding of the lean strategy, the paper proposes definitions from the developers of the system recognized in the field. INTRODUCTION As the world is turning into a global village, internationalization and globalization have taken up the majority space in the corporate world. Now business processes have developed into more efficient and effective processes. This has made the businesses more complicated and has created the vigorous competition in every industry. In such case, strategy lends a helpful thought to corporate to efficiently adjust their business operations while remain aligned with corporate mission and vision, in order to run their successfully and gain competitive edge over others. Pace, effectiveness, and client worth are basic concerns in driving productive outcomes in company. Lean strategy is also one of the strategies that seek to manage and incorporate the operations of the different functional fields of the company so as to achieve long-term company-wide goals. It has come out as a very useful tool for the organizations all through the world which helps to attain huge monetary profits while enhancing quality, expenses and process durations. Lean strategy includes an arrangement of activities or actions to reduce waste and eliminate Non Value Added (NVA) processes from manufacturing, client relations, outline of goods and services, supplier systems and production line administration and enhance the Value Added (VA) practices. A lean strategy is not a strategy that is founded on its own. It is the incorporation of Lean standards into a corporate technique or business strategy to convey leap forward changes quite a long time. It is the certainty that the structure is set up to achieve the insistent objectives without giving up the eventual fate of the organization for momentary benefits. The central thought is to expand customers’ worth while reducing waste. Lean means making more worth for customers with fewer assets or resources. A company that incorporates lean strategy comprehends value of customers and centers its key operations to expand it persistently. The definite objective is to give perfect and ideal worth to the client through a flawless value formation that supports no waste. In order to fulfill this, the concept of lean transforms the focus of management of company from enhancing separate innovations, stakes, and vertical divisions to improving the stream of items, products and administrations through whole value creation that flow on a level plane crosswise over assets, technologies and various sectors to clients. Reducing or removing waste along whole value creation channels, rather than at detached focuses, makes operations that require less human exertion, less space, fewer assets and capital, and less time to manufacture items and deliver services. This process undertakes fewer expenses and with much fewer discards and operational errors as compared to conventional business frameworks. Organizations can react to changing client demands and needs with extreme diversity, good quality, minimal effort, fewer expenses and with quick process cycles. Additionally, data management turns out to be much less difficult and more faultless. Lean strategy conveys outcomes by concentrating on examining and reducing or removing nonvalue added practices. It additionally concentrates on actualizing and supporting enhanced methods through measurements and workforce practices. Lean strategies enhance business results and satisfaction of customers in following ways: Increasing benefit and limit usage with accessible assets and other resources Minimizing item lead times and stocks to the desired extent Distributing products or items on time and complete without errors and delays Getting rid of main drivers of failures, errors, scrap and revise the processes COMPONENTS OF LEAN STRATEGY: Following are the main components of the lean strategy that help to make the process of the lean strategy more efficient and effective (Quality Training Portal, 2014): Reorganize the Value Stream (Workflow structure and Layouts): Discovering the ways to utilize maps regarding quality stream to make macro-competence work processes and micro-process work procedures Work environment in an Organization (The 5Ss): Identifying the ways in which 5Ss create an organized methodology for putting away materials, supplies, and tools in work regions. Consistency & Consistency (Quality): Recognizing how quality management strategies, for example, DOE, GR&Rs, DFA/DFM, SPC, and (particularly) mistake-proofing help to avoid issues and lead to powerful techniques. Set-Up Reduction (SMED): Examining the ways to implement set-up and changes again and again and see how essential quick set-ups are to objectives of a lean strategy. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): Finding out the ways to enhance constancy and dependability of tools and equipments by incorporating Total Productive Maintenance systems Visual Work Environment (Demonstration shows & Controls): Analyzing how visual showcases and visual controls strengthen and improve a lean exertion. Supporting Operations of Lean (Procurement, Assembling, Scheduling, Warehousing & Shipment): Determining how vital lean planning, lean buying, lean bookkeeping, and lean warehousing practices are to sustaining and maintaining a lean assembling exertion. Ceaseless Improvement (PDCA): Exploring the choices for making a lean exertion feasible and imperative Regarding the lean strategy, this paper has presented the detailed literature review which comprehensively focuses on the history and early development of a lean strategy. Further, report has presented the advantages and disadvantages that companies have gained by applying lean strategy in an organizational framework. LITERATURE REVIEW: Lean Strategy is not a new concept. It infers from the Toyota Production System or JIT (Just In Time Production), initiated by Henry Ford and different ancestors. The Japanese auto industry produced lean Strategy, mainly Toyota, after the test to re-develop the economy of Japan after World War II (Shah and Ward, 2007). Toyota understood that in the event that they were to undertake the US auto titans of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, they would need to work more wisely. Lean strategy regarding manufacturing is merely a dynamic method for creating what the client needs when they need it, at a value they are ready to pay and utilizing minimum asset. According to Berggren (1993), the advancement of Lean was not widely known outside the Japan until the 1970s. Britain picked up right on time knowledge of Lean assembling strategy from the foundation of Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in the United Kingdom. Shah and Ward (2003) stated that all things considered, until the 1990s it was truly just the car business that had embraced Lean manufacturing strategy. From that point forward, it has spread into aviation and general assembling, shopper gadgets, human services, development and, all the more as of late, to nourishment assembling and meat transforming. The extraction of Lean manufacturing strategy and Just In Time (JIT) Production retreats to Eli Whitney and the idea of tradable parts. This paper follows the high purposes of that extensive history. The below chart shows the timeline that depicts the period of some major developments in the field of Lean strategy: (Strategos, n.d.) Early Developments Eli Whitney is most well known as the designer of the cotton gin. In any case, the gin was a small achievement contrasted with his flawlessness of tradable parts. As stated by Hounshell (1985), Whitney created this around 1799 when he undertook an agreement from the U.S. armed force for the assembling of 10,000 black powder guns at the extraordinarily low cost of $13.40 each. For the following 100 years makers, fundamentally worried about individual advances and technologies. Amid this time, the structure of engineering drawings was created, up-to-date and advanced machine instruments were improved and vast scale procedures, for example, the Bessemer process for the production of steel seized the attention (Emiliani, 2006). As items moved starting with one separate process then onto the next through the logistics framework and inside processing plants, few individuals worried about: What processes took place between techniques How different procedures were approved and organized inside the manufacturing plant How the chain of techniques worked as a framework How every specialist or employee went around a job Bernstein, I. (2010) commented that this altered in the late 1890s with the contributions of Industrial Engineers in the early period. Voss (1995) further added that Frederick W. Taylor started to give special consideration on individual specialists and work systems. The outcome was Time Study and institutionalized work. He called his plans Scientific Management. Taylor was a disputable human being. Taneja, Pryor and Toombs (2011) also argued that the idea of implementing science to administration was fine however Taylor just overlooked the aspects of behavioral sciences. Likewise, he had a strange mentality towards production line specialists. In this regard, Hines, Holweg and Rich (2004) commented that Frank Gilbreth (Cheaper By The Dozen) made some contribution by including Motion Study and developing Process Charting. According to Nightingale and Mize (2002), this new invention of process charts centered the consideration on all work components together with those non-value added components which ordinarily arise between the "authority" components. Lillian Gilbreth studied the theories of motivation to identify the motivational factors of workers or specialists and determine the influence of workers’ behaviour on the outcome of work performance. There were, obviously, numerous different contributors who studied the behaviour of employees and factory workers. These were the individuals who began the thought of "disposing of waste," the key principle of JIT and Lean Strategy. The Ford System Despite the fact that there are examples of thorough procedure thinking in assembling once more to the Arsenal in Venice in the period of 1450s, the first individual to genuinely incorporate a whole creation methodology was Henry Ford. In 1913, at Highland Park, MI, he fixed compatible parts reliably with standard work and moving transport to make what he described as stream production (Dankbaar, 1997). General society seized this in the sensational type of the moving mechanical production system, yet from the angle of the assembling engineer, the leaps forward went a lot advanced Henry Ford lined up creation steps in the procedure arrangement wherever conceivable by utilizing special purpose systems and go/no-go gages to create and gather the segments going into the automobile inside a couple of minutes, and carry fitting parts specifically to line-side. Holweg (2007) argued that this was a genuinely progressive break from the shop procedures of the American System. This system comprised of broadly useful machines gathered by methodology, which made parts that in the long run discovered their path into finished items after the process of fitting in subassembly and closing assembly of parts. The issue with Fords framework was not the stream: He could turn the inventories of the whole organization each few days. Relatively it was his failure to give various collections. According to Alukal, (2003) the generation of Model T was not simply restricted to a single color. It was additionally restricted to one detail with the goal that every Model T case was indistinguishable up to the end of a generation in 1926. (The client did have alternatives of four or more different body styles, a drop-on quality and feature from an external contractor included at the very end of the manufacturing process.) In fact, it creates the impression that every machine in the Ford Motor Company dealt with a solitary part number, and there were no substitutions or exchanges. At the point when the world needed assortments and innovation, counting model processes for the Model T of less than 19 years, Ford appeared to lose his direction. Different automakers reacted to the requirement for some models, each with numerous alternatives, however with creation frameworks whose manufacture steps and designs moved back to process regions with any longer process times. Benton and Shin (1998) described that in due course, they populated their creation shops with bigger and bigger machines that ran speedier and quicker, clearly bringing down expenses for every procedure step, yet persistently expanding throughput times and inventories aside from the uncommon case such as motor machining lines where the greater part of the methodology steps could be joined and mechanized. Far more terrible, the time slacks between procedure steps and the complex part routings obliged everlastingly advanced data management frameworks resulting in automated Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) frameworks (Dennis, 2007). The Toyota Manufacturing System: As Taiichi Ohno, Kiichiro Toyoda, and many others at Toyota took a glance of the circumstance in the 1930s, and all the more strongly right after World War II, it jumped out at them that an arrangement of straightforward developments may make it more conceivable to give both coherence in procedure flow and a wide assortment in item offerings. Thus, they returned to Fords unique idea and designed the Toyota Production System (Womack, Jones and Roos, 2008). Morgan and Liker (2006) stated that this framework basically moved the attention of the assembling designer from isolated machines and their use to the stream of the item through the aggregate methodology. According to Green (1999), Toyota presumed that it can achieve ease, high assortment, high superiority, and extremely fast throughput times by right-measuring machines for the real volume required, presenting self-monitoring systems and machines to check quality, arranging the machines as according to the sequence of processes. Moreover, organizing fast setups so every machine could make little volumes of numerous part numbers, and having every procedure step reporting the past projects of its present requirements for materials, would also help to acquire ease, high assortment, high superiority, and extremely fast throughput times to reply to varying client demands. Additionally, data administration and management could be made much less difficult and more precise. The point of view of lean was completely portrayed in the book “The Machine That Changed the World,” written by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos in 1990. In an ensuing volume, Lean Thinking, Womack and Jones (1996) developed these lean standards considerably more to five: Identify the worth preferred by the client Classify the worth stream for every item giving that value and test the greater part of the wasted procedures that are important to present it Develop a process in which product flow ceaselessly through the enduring value added processes Initiate pull between all processes where nonstop stream is conceivable Direct toward excellence with the goal that the quantity of steps and the measure of time and data required to serve the client ceaselessly falls Lean Today As it has already been discussed, Toyota, the heading lean model on the planet, stands ready to turn into the biggest automaker on the planet in terms of general sales. According to the views of Cusumano and Nobeoka (1998) Toyota’s predominant accomplishment in increasing market shares and sales in all international markets which lead to an acceptable lead in hybrid engineering, remains as the strongest confirmation of the force of the lean strategy in the company. This constant achievement over a period of last two decades made a gigantic interest for more noteworthy learning about lean strategy. There are many papers and books, also a huge number of media articles investigating the subject and various different resources accessible to this developing crowd. Hines, Holweg and Rich (2004) added that as lean speculation keeps on spreading to each country on the planet, pioneers are additionally adjusting the principles and standards ahead of assembling or manufacturing, to distribution and logistics, services, administrations, trade, medicinal services, development, support, and government as well. Womack and Jones (2010) also agreed with the above statement and commented that lean awareness and strategies are just starting to flourish among senior directors and managers in all areas today. The Future: Lean strategy is just about eliminating or reducing wastes, those exercises and courses of action that do not add to the worth of a product. Practically, now numerous organizations are thriving to discover better approaches to make the processes efficient which help them to enhance productivity or lessen costs and eliminate wastes (Koskela, 2004). Many researchers are of the view that most of the organizations are passionately grasping the command on various devices and techniques of Lean strategy. All the more notably, companies are now implementing those strategies to make their processes efficient for their customers. THE STRENGTHS OF THE THEORY: Lean strategy focuses on the removal of waste in all structures in the working environment. Particular lean systems incorporate Just-In-Time inventory system, Kanban scheduling management, 5s work environment association, Scrum and further "agile" programming improvement techniques. A significant number of these ideas and frameworks were organized via automaker Toyota in the early period of 1940s and therefore were embraced as best practices in numerous commercial ventures apart from car generation. The following are normal outcomes for organizations that have incorporated lean strategy in numerous varying businesses and of distinctive sizes over time of a few years. Applying these standards to the manufacturing sector has the potential for both enhanced profitability and expanded unpredictability by following proportions: Delivery rate would increase by 26% Stock turns would increase by 33% Productivity would enhance by 25% Scrap would reduce by 26% Space would decline by 33% Following are some expected benefits that company will experience: 1. Competitive Advantage: Apart from decreasing expenses and enhancing the effectiveness, lean productions procedures present frameworks and create aptitudes with the staff that help changes in the working environment to increase sales. Space saved money on warehousing may be utilized to include new product offerings. The same is valid for time reserve funds. The staff can consume new work and respond rapidly to changes in customer request. Creating a work rapidly, in short cycles, without waste and conveyed on time gives an edge over others. For example, Boeing Corporation used Lean strategies crosswise which led it to turn into an expense cutting system yet a reasoning of development. Utilizing a Lean-inferred "kaizen" methodology, Shared Services Group tape at Boeing Data Center lessened the footprint of the tape by above 90% whilst shortening the process duration of the tape (Jenkins, 2002). The last idea the Boeing Corporation has presented is that of the bottleneck that entails the methodology that identifies the throughput of the entire procedure. Similarly, this adjusts to lean "pull" fabrication that guides the company to whether cease the production or not (in the event that there is no client pull). The company was aiming to enhance the productivity and adequacy of the entire supply chain they intended to use such strategy for the whole production network not only production unit. The structured used is depicted in the diagram below: Boeing Corporation used the concept of Kanbans and their operation to guarantee FIFO must be thoroughly considered and resulted in following efficiencies: Executing a "pull" generation framework. Declining lead-time to the client. Lessening stock at all processes in a methodology. 2. Enhanced quality: A number of measures in a lean strategy are adapted towards enhancing quality. As quality issues emerge, critical thinking procedures are utilized to identify the issue. From that point, revising errors is set up to reinforce the procedure and avoid repentance. Thus, the quality or nature of the product will enhance. As an exemplar, with the combination of Lean Six Sigma and a Top-200 client center, 3M enhanced its strap manufacturing systems. The change group diminished errors and deficiencies in parts for every million by 28 times as sales expanded by 54 percent in 2010 and improved quality of production processes and products (ASQ, n.d.). 3. Labor reductions: One of the real advantages of the lean strategy is accomplishing more with fewer employees. With institutionalized work and expanded efficiencies, the capability to achieve the task with fewer workers turns into a genuine opportunity. The idea of the lean strategy utilizes the workforce in performing further kaizen movement, preparing to improve expertise, or preservation of the framework once it is executed. Ability Building and Social Performance in the Nike Supply Chain, discovered reception of lean production strategy at NIKE contracted production lines brought about a 15% drop in genuine work infringement at more than 300 contracted manufacturing plants from 2009-2013 as a rule, the first quantitative confirmation of lean works on conveying factory-based change for laborers. HRM preparing has now been consolidated into our more extensive lean production project. Focus areas incorporate waste removal of all types and more proficient utilization of materials and workers. This methodology could put up production closer for sale to the public and make a more supportable, stable source focused on employees as a source of development, and drive beneficial progress for the organization (Nike Inc., n.d.). 4. Easy management: The work guidelines and institutionalized principles let individuals comprehend what, when and why they need to do. This makes dealing with a particular sector much simpler. In any case they will be much simpler to manage in a group environment where the help supporting networks are excited to help resolve the issues. For instance, ConMed Linvatec reported an increase in its organization-wide productivity by applying lean strategy to its system. With the help of this strategy, company successfully linked its operations and increased the employees’ productivity at the best. At Utica plant of ConMed, the assembling and manufacturing territory for liquid infusion equipments once expanded 3,300 square feet and had $93,000 worth of devices available. Presently it possesses one-fifth that space and store around $6,000 worth of devices. Yield for every employee is almost 21%. Company found much easier to manage systems, employees, company’s operations and various processes. Eventually, it enhanced its competitiveness by employing such processes. 5. Reduced Space: As a major aspect of the waste removal methodology, space will be made. Diminishment of completed and crude stock will spare space upright in your racking and in addition evenly over your floor. For instance, at the Jaguar auto manufacturing plant in Castle Bromwich, the line of production has been outlined utilizing the standards of the lean strategy. In the early days, Jaguar manufacturing area took up significantly more plant space as of the fact that a ton of supplies and stocks were kept on the production line floor. Now all stocks are kept in a different stockpiling range where they are conveyed just-in-time to sustain the manufacturing process. At the point when more stock is required, manufacturing line specialists utilize a "Kanban" indicating framework to illuminate the stores that they require more supplies. 6. More secure Work Environment: Visual administration and 5s will help distinguish when things are out of the spot. At the point when unnecessary components are expelled from the operation, the work environment gets to be considerably more sorted out. Also, a composed work environment is a safe natures domain. BMW used lean strategy in the production of its new series of BMW X3 SUV (E83) The X3 (E83) in the year 2003. The company reported much safer environment than before which ultimately increase the morale of employees. This use of the lean strategy within the company results in increased efficiency in the production of automobiles (EPA, n.d). THE WEAKNESSES OF THE THEORY: Lean strategy depends on coordinated mechanical and technological frameworks, small labor forces of highly skilled and trained workers and radical change in the culture of the organization. All of these components can display unique complexities that must be overcome to attain a positively outcomes of lean production framework (Ndahi, 2006). Understanding these major challenges is an essential source for creating lean execution plan. The story of air conditioning organization in the Southeastern United States that is known as X-Corp gives an incredible example of a company that strived to execute lean strategy, but could not get the desired results (Ortiz, 2008). According to the case study, following are the major challenges that X-Corp has encountered during its period of implementation and led to negative effects across the organization. 1. Supply Chain Issues: Lean strategy incorporates the minimization or eradication of time capacity for storing materials and items. X-Corp failed to integrate their supply chain issues properly while executing lean strategy in the system. Executing a just-in-time ordering framework is important to guarantee that crude materials are continually coming in at the ideal rate to satisfy operational demand. This obliges close synchronization with suppliers between your two organizations. This sort of close operational synchronization can present a number of issues since management in both organizations must direction with one another while dealing with their particular side of the execution strategy. The same could be genuine on the final product end, too. Using just-in-time inventory system to serve the business clients, demands to go about as a just-in-time supplier, sending off orders regularly and repeatedly. 2. Development of Workers: Executing lean production approaches in business develops an ability gap that must be overcome. It is essential to resolving supply chain issues by developing proper technological infrastructure, but however management of mechanized production and quality-control processes obliges well trained and skilled workforce than traditional production line systems. At X-Corp, the main issue arose was of unskilled labors who were unable to control and monitor the innovative production system of the company. Lean strategy of production obliges extremely trained and skilled workers to monitor, repair and plan the design of mechanized production technology on a regular basis. Technical workers will probably oblige certification of safety and specific licenses to work and keep up such processes, and they request much higher payments and rewards than general work force. 3. Cultural Issues: Introducing lean strategies presents a massive change in the way work is carried out in a production company. Executing lean strategies require fewer workers to undertake a wide range of responsibilities. It includes a serious assurance of employees to reduce waste, which can lead to change workers’ formal job responsibilities. While implementing lean strategy, X-Corp did not train its employees and special workforce effectively to manage the processes which lead to great failure of this strategy. It ought to include various motivational forces and bonuses for extra work in order to rewards employees increasing efforts and ideas to cut down cost, as well as production waste and time. Implementation of lean n strategy lead to change complete set-up and employee structure at all levels of the company from senior management to production line operators. Therefore, honest commitment of employees of the organization is necessary to successfully develop and implement lean strategies across the organization. 4. Technological Advancements: X-Corp encountered the great failure in incorporating advance technology in its processes throughout the system. This led the company to experience losses in terms of losing expertise in technical areas that were vital for the air conditioning company. While implementing lean strategy, the company is required to make considerable investments in the field of technology and engineering, from innovative production processes to appropriate monitoring and investigation programming for checking quality change on production processes. Picking the appropriate frameworks is critical for the accomplishment as a lean producer, since company will will depend on its processes for the productive operations of the business. One of the fundamentals of lean business strategies is to mechanize the systems as much as it can, making the company more dependent on engineering than it may have been previously. CONCLUSION: Lean strategy is simply a production based framework that helps an organization to utilize its resources in such a way that reduces the waste of resources and increase the efficiency in production. This strategy ultimately helps to achieve the optimum production level in the best possible manner. Lean strategy is constantly connected with the production process in an organization that is a set of devices connected on the shop floor, without considering the client-focused strategic thinking. So it is being proposed that lean strategy should be utilized on the shop floor as per the Toyotas case, yet in regards to lean thinking, it should be concerned with the strategic value chain of the company. Lean strategy is based on strategic as well as operational level. Companies have encountered various challenges while implementing lean strategy in their systems such as lack of technology, communication processes, cultural differences, supply chain issues, changing responsibilities of employees, etc. However, this strategy is largely supported by most of the organizations as systematic implementation of this strategy leads to greater benefits. References Alukal, G. (2003). Create a lean, mean machine. Available from http://library.dip.go.th/multim2/ejournal/Quality%20Progress/Quality%20Pro2003/Scan%20%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%81%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%9B%E0%B9%87%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A1/10148.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2014]. ASQ. (n.d.). Quality In Manufacturing: Case Studies. Available from: http://asq.org/manufacturing/why-quality/case-studies.html [Accessed 23 August 2014]. Benton, W. C., & Shin, H. (1998). Manufacturing planning and control: The evolution of MRP and JIT integration. European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 110, no 3, pp. 411-440. Berggren, C. (1993). Lean production—the end of history?. Work, Employment & Society, vol. 7, no 2, pp. 163-188. Bernstein, I. (2010). The lean years: A history of the American worker, 1920-1933. London: Haymarket Books. Cusumano, M. A., & Nobeoka, K. (1998). Thinking beyond lean: how multi-project management is transforming product development at Toyota and other companies.  New York: Free Press. Dankbaar, B. (1997). Lean production: denial, confirmation or extension of sociotechnical systems design?. Human relations, vol. 50, no 5, pp. 567-583. Dennis, P. (2007). Lean Production simplified: A plain-language guide to the worlds most powerful production system. New York: Productivity Press. Emiliani, M. L. (2006). Origins of lean management in America: the role of Connecticut businesses. Journal of management History, vol. 12, no 2, pp. 167-184. EPA. (n.d.). Lean Manufacturing and Environment: Case study. Available from: http://www.epa.gov/lean/environment/studies/apollo.htm [Accessed 23 August 2014]. Green, S. D. (1999). The missing arguments of lean construction. Construction Management & Economics, vol. 17, no 2, pp. 133-137. Hines, P., Holweg, M., & Rich, N. (2004). Learning to evolve: a review of contemporary lean thinking. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 24, no 10, pp. 994-1011. Holweg, M. (2007). The genealogy of lean production. Journal of operations management, vol. 25, no 2, pp. 420-437. Hounshell, D. (1985). From the American system to mass production, 1800-1932: The development of manufacturing technology in the United States (No. 4). JHU Press. Jenkins, M. (2002). Across the enterprise Boeing is attacking waste and streamlining process. The goal? Cost competitiveness. Boeing Frontier, Available from: http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2002/august/cover.html [Accessed 23 August 2014]. Koskela, L. J. (2004). Moving on-beyond lean thinking. Lean Construction Journal, vol. 1, no 1, pp. 24-37. Morgan, J. M., & Liker, J. K. (2006). The Toyota product development system. New York: Productivity Press. Ndahi, H. B. (2006). Lean Manufacturing in a Global and Competitive Market: The Goal Was to Create a Manufacturing Environment That Is Driven by Demand, and That Holds Only a Small Amount of Inventory and Products at Any Given Time. The Technology Teacher, vol. 66, no 3. P. 14. Nightingale, D. J., & Mize, J. H. (2002). Development of a lean enterprise transformation maturity model. Information, Knowledge, Systems Management, vol. 3, no 1, pp. 15-30. Nike Inc. (n.d.). Nike Inc: Manufacturing. Available from: http://www.nikeresponsibility.com/report/content/chapter/manufacturing [Accessed 23 August 2014]. Ortiz, C. (2008). Lessons Form A Lean Consultants: Avoiding lean implementation failures on the shop floor. Available from: http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780131584631/samplepages/0131584634_Sample.pdf [Accessed 23 August 2014]. Quality Training Portal. (2014). Components of Lean. Available from: http://www.qualitytrainingportal.com/resources/lean_manufacturing/lean_manufacturing_components.htm [Accessed 23 August 2014]. Shah, R., & Ward, P. T. (2003). Lean manufacturing: context, practice bundles, and performance. Journal of Operations Management, vol. 21, no 2, pp. 129-149. Shah, R., & Ward, P. T. (2007). Defining and developing measures of lean production. Journal of operations management, vol. 25, no 4, pp. 785-805. Strategos. (n.d.). Lean Manufacturing Historic Timeline. Available from: http://www.strategosinc.com/lean_manufacturing_history.htm [Accessed 20 August 2014]. Taneja, S., Pryor, M. G., & Toombs, L. A. (2011). Frederick W. Taylors scientific management principles: relevance and validity. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, vol. 16, no 3, pp. 60. Voss, C. A. (1995). Operations management–from Taylor to Toyota–and beyond?. British Journal of Management, vol. 6, no 1, pp. 17-S29. Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (1996). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your organisation. New York: Simon and Shuster. Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2010). Lean thinking: banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. New York, NY: Free Press. Womack, J. P., Jones, D. T., & Roos, D. (2008). The machine that changed the world. London: Simon and Schuster. Read More