The Academic Development Trajectories of the Lean Production Based on Main Path Analysis Method

Abstract

Enterprises looking to be competitive are constantly looking for a continuous increase in productivity, quality, and level of services. With the development of the industry 4.0 concept, manufacturers are more confident about the new advantages of automation and systems integration. Lean management is a well-developed and empirically proven managerial strategy. Combining lean and industry 4.0 practices seems to be a necessary evolutionary step to further raise the level of operational excellence. This study applied the main path analysis method to explore the development trend of lean management in the academic field. First, this study adopted the Scopus database to collect relevant papers, then analyzed their overall development trajectory by using Main Path 437 software, and used the g-index and h-index to identify more influential journals. Next, this study clustered the papers with similar topics into several groups, and then used Wordle software to present the keywords of each group in a word cloud that serves as a reference for naming. Thus, the top five groups obtained are as follows: “Lean production concept and application”, “Lean Six Sigma concept and application”, “Lean system integration and application”, “Lean construction concept and application”, and “Lean healthcare concept and application”. Finally, this study provides explanations and conclusions on each group’s development trajectory, as well as research recommendations in the field of lean production. The findings can serve as guides for industry, government, and academia as they develop future lean production development strategies. This study utilized an integrated analysis approach to successfully and effectively depict the trajectory of lean production development and applications, identify future research and development directions, and generate technological forecasts.