Lean Implementation and Organizational Transformation: A Literature Review

Manufacturing organizations are constantly striving to develop more effective and flexible means for managing challenges due to globalization and increasing customer expectations. This has led to increased efforts by the business community to research and implement the Toyota Production System, or lean manufacturing, to address these challenges. These efforts have resulted in numerous publications on lean manufacturing, including research reports, scholarly articles, and trade magazine articles. However, the existing body of knowledge on lean manufacturing is disperse and diverse in nature with respect to the application and implementation of lean tools and practices, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to gain a real grasp of this topic. In this article, we have comprehensively organized the existing work on implementation of lean manufacturing in a more structured way, enabling engineering management practitioners to more easily identify knowledge and best practices and enabling researchers to identify gaps in the extant literature. Lastly, drawing from the organizational science literature, this article also provides important insights on lean manufacturing from the perspective of organizational learning, innovation, and \culture.