Title: Leanness assessment in automotive industry: case study approach

Authors: Masoud Rahiminezhad Galankashi; Syed Ahmad Helmi; Muhammad Hisjam; Abd Rahman Abdul Rahim

Addresses: Department of Materials, Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi, Johor, Malaysia ' Department of Materials, Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi, Johor, Malaysia; Center for Engineering Education (CEE), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta, Indonesia ' UTM Razak School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia International Campus, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract: The main objective of this study is to develop a framework to assess the leanness of companies in the automotive industry. Although lean manufacturing (LM) has been discussed in previous studies, leanness assessment is less investigated. Therefore, to fill this gap, this study is conducted to assess the leanness of three manufacturing companies with regard to different supply chain drivers. Principally, six drivers of facility, inventory, transportation, sourcing, pricing and information are selected as the major components of supply chains. The lean-related activities of each driver are identified and a benchmarked questionnaire is applied to assess the leanness of companies. Next, different leanness of each driver is calculated accordingly. An overall quantity of leanness is also provided for each company. Finally, some managerial insights and future research directions are recommended. According to the results, second case study has the highest degree of leanness in comparison to other two companies. In addition, this company has the best performance with regard to each supply chain driver.

Keywords: supply chain strategy; SCS; lean manufacturing; leanness assessment; automotive industry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVCM.2018.091110

International Journal of Value Chain Management, 2018 Vol.9 No.1, pp.70 - 88

Received: 07 Jun 2017
Accepted: 28 Aug 2017
Published online: 10 Apr 2018 *

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