| The underlying philosophy of lean production is that implementation and use of lean practices reduces waste and thereby improves organizational performance, increases competitiveness, and satisfies the customer expectations to be more responsive, efficient, effective, and value conscious. However, not all organizations that have implemented lean production (hereinafter also "lean") have realized the intended benefits. The fundamental problem appears to be that lean production is rarely implemented in a thorough and effective approach, one that includes the human element's (user's) skillful, consistent, and committed use. Hence, failure occurs due to this inefficiency.;The focus of this study builds upon prior research in index development to extend and develop a new index that focuses on the human element to predict the successful implementation and use of lean production in an organization. The new Lean Production Implementation Effectiveness (LPIE) index benchmarks the Personal Behavior Based Lean (PBBL) index developed by Sawhney and Chason (2005) because of its underlying focus on the human element and its linkage to lean implementation success. The elements of the LPIE index include climate, innovation-value fit (Klein & Sorra, 1996), and stages (Leseure, Bauer, Birdi, Neely, & Denyer, 2004) which were borrowed from diffusion innovation theory because of its well-known emphasis on the human element in disseminating an innovation through various stages.;The research study examines lean production deployment in a sample of lean practitioners obtained through the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). Partial Least Square (PLS) and factor analysis are used to determine an implementation effectiveness index score instead of the summation analysis utilized in the Sawhney and Chason (2005) study. The results provide support for the indicators that affect implementation effectiveness from the perspective of the human element (user/employee) in an organization's lean deployment. |
