Lenses of Lean in Non-repetitive Manufacturing: Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Hopp & Spearman proposed a construct consisting of four lenses of lean in their attempt to guide research and implementation of lean. Authors claim that their proposition could introduce much needed systematicity into the field. In order to test if the proposed construct is useful for researching and practicing lean in non-repetitive manufacturing, authors propose a systematic literature review of 126 articles published in 72 peer-reviewed international journals. The analysis results show that lenses are addressed with different levels of attention, where Process and Flow lens dominate the literature. The construct covers some important topics for non-repetitive manufacturing, such as the context of waste, waste propagation, variability, buffering, and complexities, deeming it suitable as a foundation for considering lean in non-repetitive manufacturing. On the other hand, the construct has some fallacies which should be recognized, in general, and within the context of non-repetitive manufacturing, such as a strong focus on efficiency, disregard of some important lean topics such as responsiveness, flexibility, strategic aspects of lean, management commitment, people development, and change management.