Level of Lean Culture and Its Relation to Organizational Life Cycle

Abstract

Lean Production is widely recognized and accepted in the automotive industry. It concerns the strict integration of humans in the manufacturing process, involvement of all employees in continuous improvement and in waste elimination. The literature emphasizes the importance of the underlying organizational culture as a critical factor for supporting and sustaining lean management implementation. Organizational life cycle plays role in achieved level of lean too. The article seeks to verify whether there is a link between the attributes of lean culture and the stages of life cycle. Therefore, this paper initiates a discussion towards a framework that combines life cycle assessment and appropriate lean culture characteristics to provide the best condition for continuous business improvement. To address this issue, automotive industry was chosen as it is the world’s leading advanced manufacturing technology industry producing complex products and is the most advanced industry in using lean.