The moderating effects of corporate and national factors on lean projects barriers: a cross‐national study

Abstract

Despite companies’ efforts to develop lean thinking in their industrial context, the implementation of many lean projects has not been consistently successful, often resulting in delay, failure, abandonment or rejection. Whereas some authors emphasised that company characteristics, like the product demand profile, are significant factors in lean projects, other studies analysed the impact of national culture. This paper aims to study the combined effect of various factors related to national culture and company characteristics of lean implementation barriers in order to determine whether the environmental context in which the company operation can affect the outcome of lean project implementation. A survey has been conducted to collect information about companies of various sizes (small–medium–large) in all industry fields. Data from companies, including manufacturing firms, in 23 different countries, were analysed in depth by a combination of Association Rules and Network Analysis. The results show that some national culture dimensions, such as Performance Orientation and Gender Egalitarianism, influence lean management success and help to maintain a lean culture. Maintaining a lean culture is even more critical than developing it. Furthermore, if the implementation of lean practices is an arduous task for large organisations, it becomes even greater for SMEs. Other cultural factors of individuals such as Uncertainty Avoidance, Future Orientation and Institutional Collectivism also help to support a lean culture and overcome human and cultural barriers.

Keywords:

• Lean management
• barriers for lean implementation
• lean success factors
• national culture
• association rules

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ilaria DeSanctis

Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica, an Associate Professor in Industrial Plants at Università Politecnica delle Marche, graduated with distinction in 1999 in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ancona. In 2003, he got PhD in Energy Management at the University of Ancona. He is author of more than 100 papers published on national and international proceedings and journals. His research topics mainly focus on industrial plants design and production systems, soft computing techniques in reliability analysis and maintenance activities planning.

Joaquin Bienvenido Ordieres Mere

Ilaria De Sanctis, Mechanical Engineer cum laude in 2013. She concluded a European PhD in Industrial Engineer in February 2017 about Resilience and Lean Management. Currently, Ilaria is working as a Data Analyst in the Customer Experience Department of an international security service company.

Maurizio Bevilacqua

Joaquín Ordieres works as a full professor in Industrial Management Department of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. His main interests are related with modelling and optimization of processes, both technical but also managerial ones, numerical simulation, advanced lean concepts and project management. He is specialist in Big Analytics and Applied Machine Learning.

Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica

Maurizio Bevilacqua, a full professor in Industrial Plants at the Università Politecnica delle Marche, graduated with distinction in 1986 in mechanical engineering at the University of Ancona. His research activity mainly deals with multiphase flow transport and separation analysis, environmental analysis of process plants and maintenance management and operation management. He is author of several papers that have been published on national and international journals and conference proceedings.