Description

The research takes a step toward clarifying the concept of lean production and develops and validates a multi-dimensional measure of lean production. The 10 distinct dimensions of a lean system are continuous flow, customer involvement, employee involvement, JIT delivery by suppliers, pull, set up time reduction, statistical process control, supplier development, supplier feedback, and total productive/preventive maintenance.

Definition

Lean production is an integrated socio-technical system whose main objective is to eliminate waste by concurrently reducing or minimizing supplier, customer, and internal variability. This dimension of lean production is about facilitating JIT production including kanban cards which serves as a signal to start or stop production.

Items

Please indicate the extent of implementation of each of the following practices in your plant. (1) no implementation; (2) little implementation; (3) some implementation; (4) extensive implementation; (5) complete implementation.

• Production is "pulled" by the shipment of finished goods.
• Production at stations is "pulled" by the current demand of the next station.
• We use a "pull" production system.
• We use Kanban, squares, or containers of signals for production control.

Source

• Shah/Ward (2007): Defining and developing measures of lean production. Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 785-805.

Comments

The last item might be formative rather than reflective, because it doesn't react to other signals than those mentioned.