Lean Manufacturing Implementation in Intermittent Environments: A Framework

This chapter suggests a framework for the implementation of Lean Manufacturing in intermittent production environments-Job shop. The environment faced by organizations request the adoption of more efficient management models and practices in order to increase their competitiveness. In this context, Lean philosophy, in particular Lean Manufacturing has proven to be an extremely powerful management paradigm. However, the Lean philosophy when is applied incorrectly may turn out to be a failure for the organizations. In this sense there are several factors that can hamper the correct development of Lean Manufacturing within organizations such as (i) lack of commitment by top management; (ii) lack of qualified and graduates employees without know how on this paradigm; (iii) lack of guidelines on the application of tools and methodology of Lean Manufacturing. This research shows that over the past few years, tools have been developed within Lean Manufacturing relating it to different types of industrial environments. However, guidelines for implementing this paradigm "step-by-step" is missing.