Critical success factors of lean manufacturing for Indian ceramic industries: Modelling through interpretive ranking process

In India, majority of manufacturing organizations comes under small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) that are recognized as backbone for the economy by contributing a significant amount in gross domestic product (GDP). In the competitive business environment, SMEs are trying to enhance the value of their production and services on decimating the non-productive activities from their manufacturing systems. It has been reported in previous explorations that lean manufacturing (LM) is an approach to recognize and eliminate different forms of waste from the production process, and improve the business performance. Therefore, SMEs has to follow lean manufacturing to ensure sustainable profitability. To optimise the LM implementation benefits, organization/s must see the different success factors thoroughly. So far, critical success factors (CSFs) of lean manufacturing in labour intensive SMEs were not explored systematically. In this study, CSFs for implementing lean are extracted from literature and were analysedand validated after discussion held with relevant industrial experts/academicians. Interpretive ranking process (IRP) technique was employed to observe the relationship amongst the CSFs. To check the interpretations and pair-wise comparison, a dominance system graph for each performance measures was developed. The results revealed that regular training and education for workers, proper selection of lean tools/techniques and low scrap/rework/elimination of waste are the most CSFs for implementing lean in Indian ceramic SME sector.