Bibliographic Study on the Difficulties Encountered by SMEs During the Implementation of Lean Manufacturing

Abstract

The reduction of wastes, improved industrial performance, and the SME environment are very important topics for the image of the organization. Recently, several business managers have implemented lean manufacturing in order to improve and optimize productivity and quality of production, some of them have achieved significant results while others have not yet succeeded in setting up lean manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the implementation of lean manufacturing in SMEs worldwide, to identify and present the critical difficulties and obstacles that impact the implementation, and to highlight the success factors of manufacturing firms. The bibliographic study findings allowed us to collect a list of the difficulties that we classified according to the amount of occurrences which showed that five difficulties represent 77, 78% of the discontent causes, from what we note: the lack of leadership and the lack of commitment of top management; lack of financial resources; resistance to change; lack of training and knowledge about lean tools; and lack of know-how, skills and expertise. We noticed that these difficulties are extremely identical whether in Morocco or elsewhere in the world. In the same way, we have pointed out that the commitment of top management is a key factor that determines the success of the implementation and the success of the company. Finally, the novelty of our paper lies in the preliminary proposal of a model that explains the impact of the management commitment on the performance of the company, and on its customers and employees.