Analysis of Lean Manufacturing Frameworks

In recent years, the applications of Lean Manufacturing (LM) in different types of industries are growing rapidly. Some of the organizations have reported huge benefits, while many industries have not obtained the desired results. One of the reasons for this can be attributed to improper understanding of LM by both the management and employees of an organization. Researchers worldwide have attempted to solve this issue by proposing various frameworks. A literature review on frameworks of LM revealed around 30 frameworks. A comparative analysis carried out on these frameworks has shown that these frameworks suffer from various shortcomings. Hence in this paper, an attempt has been made to propose a new conceptual framework for LM, which will resolve some of these limitations. The proposed framework utilizes 65 LM elements, which are categorized according to the decision levels and the role of internal stakeholders in an organization. According to the authors' knowledge, there is no LM framework in the literature, which is as comprehensive as the proposed one and which provides a complete integration of these elements into a coherent whole. However, the proposed framework is conceptual and needs to be validated.