Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore current state-of-the-art on lean in High-Mix/Low-Volume (HMLV) industry. For this purpose, authors propose a systematic literature review of 110 articles published in 66 peer-reviewed international journals that explicitly discuss lean in HMLV context. The purpose is to investigate research that is available, in order to analyse theoretical aspects of lean considerations in HMLV context, identify the level of lean maturity, the scope of lean, the way lean is implemented, and tools and practices that are commonly used. The results of the analysis show that current research is mainly focussed on practice, with little attention to theory development. The maturity of lean implementation is rather low, as articles mostly address obvious waste reduction, while more advanced concepts such as variability management and buffering remain under-researched. Studies are often operationally and internally oriented, with shop-floor improvements being the area of interest, while embedding lean in strategy is not sufficiently addressed. Lean implementation frameworks presented in the literature are usually tool-based, addressing a narrow set of simplified cases that do not take fully into account complexities of HMLV industry. Lastly, a rather narrow set of tools is used, with tools often being adapted without proper consideration of relevance of a certain tool for HMLV industry. As publications reviewing lean in HMLV context are scarce, this study presents valuable insight and serves as an excellent resource for research on the subject, since it not only presents the existing knowledge in a structured way, but also identifies possible directions for future research.

摘要

本文的目的是探索当前高混合/低容量 (HMLV) 行业中精益的最新技术。为此，作者对发表在 66 份经同行评审的国际期刊上的 110 篇文章进行了系统的文献综述，这些期刊明确讨论了 HMLV 背景下的精益。目的是调查可用的研究，以分析 HMLV 背景下精益考虑的理论方面，确定精益成熟度的水平、精益的范围、实施精益的方式以及常用的工具和实践。分析结果表明，当前的研究主要集中在实践上，很少关注理论发展。精益实施的成熟度相当低，因为文章大多是针对明显的减少浪费，而更先进的概念，如可变性管理和缓冲，仍有待研究。研究通常以运营和内部为导向，车间改进是感兴趣的领域，而在战略中嵌入精益的问题没有得到充分解决。文献中提出的精益实施框架通常是基于工具的，解决了一组没有充分考虑 HMLV 行业复杂性的简化案例。最后，使用的工具集相当狭窄，工具经常在没有适当考虑某个工具与 HMLV 行业的相关性的情况下进行调整。由于在 HMLV 背景下审查精益的出版物很少，本研究提供了宝贵的见解，并作为该主题研究的极好资源，因为它不仅以结构化的方式呈现现有知识，