Analysing the adoption of Lean production in remanufacturing industry

Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, Oct 2018

Purpose: This paper aims to analyse the challenges of lean manufacturing implementation in the remanufacturing industry. The research was undertaken in three types of remanufacturing company, torque converter, gearbox, and jet engine remanufacturers. This paper describes the characteristics of remanufacturing companies and compares them with the best practice company adopting lean manufacturing best practice: Toyota Motor Company. Through a comparison of the characteristics of the manufacturing environment, macro, and external condition, the challenges of adopting lean manufacturing are identified.Design/methodology/approach: This study utilised a case study method to analyse qualitative data collected from interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. Although case studies are typically used in inductive research, this study followed a deductive approach.Findings: The analysis demonstrated that remanufacturing companies experience challenges due to contextual differences to the benchmark company. The research found that there are some practices that are embedded in remanufacturing companies, but that the companies do not realise that these are lean manufacturing practices. On the other hand, there are a number of external factors that are beyond the remanufacturers’ control that hinder the adoption of lean manufacturing. In addition, the aftermarket business of remanufacturers has resulted in a number of distinctive macro condition characteristics that make the adoption of lean manufacturing more complex.Practical implications: Successfully addressing barriers to lean manufacturing adoption might enhance the performance of remanufacturing process. This is because the business of remanufacturing is not value creation, but capturing value from used products.Originality/value: This paper contributes to existing literature examining lean production in remanufacturing companies. It is novel in the sense that it is the first study examining lean production in the remanufacturing industry from organisational and managerial perspectives.

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Analysing the adoption of Lean production in remanufacturing industry

Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management JIEM 2013-0953 Analysing the Adoption of Lean Production in Remanufacturing Industry Anjar Priyono Fazli Idris Universitas Islam Indonesia (Indonesia) Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Malaysia) Purpose: This paper aims to analyse the challenges of lean manufacturing implementation in the remanufacturing industry. The research was undertaken in three types of remanufacturing company, torque converter, gearbox, and jet engine remanufacturers. This paper describes the characteristics of remanufacturing companies and compares them with the best practice company adopting lean manufacturing best practice: Toyota Motor Company. Through a comparison of the characteristics of the manufacturing environment, macro, and external condition, the challenges of adopting lean manufacturing are identified. Design/methodology/approach: This study utilised a case study method to analyse qualitative data collected from interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. Although case studies are typically used in inductive research, this study followed a deductive approach. Findings: The analysis demonstrated that remanufacturing companies experience challenges due to contextual differences to the benchmark company. The research found that there are some practices that are embedded in remanufacturing companies, but that the companies do not realise that these are lean manufacturing practices. On the other hand, there are a number of external factors that are beyond the remanufacturers' control that hinder the adoption of lean manufacturing. In addition, the aftermarket business of remanufacturers has resulted in a number of distinctive macro condition characteristics that make the adoption of lean manufacturing more complex. Practical implications: Successfully addressing barriers to lean manufacturing adoption might enhance the performance of remanufacturing process. This is because the business of remanufacturing is not value creation, but capturing value from used products. Originality/value: This paper contributes to existing literature examining lean production in remanufacturing companies. It is novel in the sense that it is the first study examining lean production in the remanufacturing industry from organisational and managerial perspectives. lean manufacturing; Toyota Production System; remanufacturing industry; aftermarket industry; sustainability 1. Introduction Remanufacturing is a process in which used products, referred to as ?cores?, are reprocessed into like-new products. During the remanufacturing process, cores undergo a series of processes including inspection, disassembly, testing, reassembly, and a final check to ensure that the final products meet the remanufactured product specifications (Ijomah, 2009) . The remanufacturing process differs according to the products, with each possessing a different return flow, characteristics, yield, and potential value of recovered components (Ferrer, 2003) . Transferring lean manufacturing, which was developed in automotive industry, to remanufacturing industry could be complex process due to stickiness issues. Danese, Romano and Boscari (2017) examined how stickiness issues hinder lean implementation. Stickiness was defined as the extent to which companies stick to current manufacturing process and high resistance to change. Organisations in certain types of industry experience difficulties adopting lean and consequently they adopt some relevant lean methods, and only in specific situations to improve their operations. Some examples of the industry types include upstream continuous processing industries and complex transaction processes. Although companies have attempted to adopt lean tools as much as possible, there are some tools that are not compatible with specific situations. It is thus very rare for companies to be completely lean, which is known as operational excellence. In practice, partial implementation is more achievable, and does not involve making fundamental changes to organisational structure (Bamford, Forrester, Dehe & Leese, 2015) . Remanufacturing is strongly associated with sustainable manufacturing practices. Despite the differences between manufacturing and remanufacturing industry, the practice that is useful for adopting lean, most likely will be worthwhile to support sustainability practices in remanufacturing companies. Also, both concepts use identical ways during implementation: using problem solving, team working, production inspection and training (Piercy & Rich, 2015) . A number of lean concepts were also found in sustainability context, such as employee engagement, safety environment, waste reduction, recycling, and community engagement. Further, Piercy and Rich (2015) found that it is better for companies to implement lean manufacturing first before adopting sustainability. Lean provides foundation for sustainability. They also suggest that there is no trade off be (...truncated)


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Anjar Priyono, Fazli Idris. Analysing the adoption of Lean production in remanufacturing industry, Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 2018, pp. 697-714, Volume 11, Issue 4, DOI: 10.3926/jiem.2614