Lean manufacturing implementation level in Pakistani textile industry : a survey

The lean production or Lean manufacturing is a conceptual frame work aimed to deliver the most value from customer's prospective while consuming the fewest resources. The idea of Lean implementation has developed its roots in developing countries and it has emerged as a serious approach in order to generate improvements in performance and remain competitive in this era. For the firms of a third world country like Pakistan, to remain competitive in 21st century ,they have to embrace and excel in practices like World Class Manufacturing(WCM), lean management and Just in time (JIT) ,just to name a few. In this paper we limit our survey to lean management practices and to gauge their implementation level in Pakistani Textile industry considering this industry is the largest manufacturing industry of Pakistan and being the backbone of country’s economy. A literature review starting from lean history, tools of lean manufacturing, lean manufacturing practices and lean assessment tools is presented. A survey questionnaire was developed using Likert scale basing Doolen and Hacker(2006) model and eight Textile companies were surveyed using the same systematic approach. The finding and results of this survey are summarized to illustrate how this survey can be useful to understand which factors can contribute to the implementation of lean practices and check the level of adoption of lean practices across Textile industry in Pakistan. This paper identifies best lean practices adopted in this industrial sector and providing a bench mark for other industrial sectors and how it can be useful for further research in other sectors of Pakistan or for cross country studies