A Systematic Literature Review on Recent Lean Research: State‐of‐the‐art and Future Directions

• Author: Pietro Romano,Pamela Danese,Valeria Manfè
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12156

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 579–605 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12156

A Systematic Literature Review on Recent

Lean Research: State-of-the-art and

Future Directions

Pamela Danese, Valeria Manf`

e and Pietro Romano 1

Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, Stradella S. Nicola, 3, Vicenza 36100, Italy

1Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Udine, via delle Scienze 208, 33100

Udine, Italy

Corresponding author email: pietro.romano@uniud.it

Lean management (LM) has attracted the interest of scientists and practitioners since

1990, when Womack et al. (Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990). The Ma-

chine that Changed the World. New York, NY: Rawson Associates) popularized the

Japanese manufacturing approach aimed at eliminating waste to improve operational

performance and customer satisfaction. Over the years, the lean concept has evolved

becoming a managerial paradigm applicable to different sectors and processes with

impressiveresults. This heterogeneity of implementations and settings makes the recent

LM literature diverse and fragmented, and an extensive analysis of the latest contri-

butions on this field is lacking. To address this gap, the authors propose a systematic

literature review (SLR) of 240 articles published in 25 peer-reviewed academic jour-

nals from January 2003 to December 2015. The purpose is to analyse the recentt rends

in this area and to provide a framework that organizes lean researched issues into

mature, intermediate and nascent, based on their position in the research life cycle.

Starting from the gaps that the SLR highlights, the authors suggest conducting lean

research in the following directions: (a) grounding lean studies on existing managerial

theories; (b) addressing service settings such as banking/finance, public sector and ed-

ucation; (c) exploring the role of national culture through cross-countrycomparisons;

(d) defining and conceptualizing ‘lean-x’ processes; (e) understanding the relationships

between lean and safety/environmental issues, and (f) unveiling the effects on social

outcomes. Finally, the proposed framework helps scholars find issues not sufficiently

explored that require theory-buildingresearch (to move from nascent to intermediate)

or theory-testing research (to movefrom intermediate to mature).

Introduction

Lean is a significant area of academic research from

the early 1990s. Krafcik (1988) coined the term ‘lean’

for the first time in his Master’s degree thesis at

the MIT Sloan School of Management. However,

it was thanks to the best-selling book The Machine

that Changed the World by Womack et al. (1990)

that the term ‘lean manufacturing’ or ‘lean produc-

tion’ became popular to indicate the Toyota Produc-

tion System (TPS) as a new manufacturing paradigm

in contrast to Fordism. The main aim of lean is to

eliminate waste (muda in Japanese) in order to deliver

high-quality products and services fast and timely at

the lowest cost. As reported by many authors (e.g.

Hines et al. 2004; Moyano-Fuentes and Sacrist´

an-

D´

ıaz 2012), over the yearsthe lean approach has been

extensively adopted, and now an increasing number

of lean implementations can be found beyond the au-

tomotive sector (e.g. healthcare, construction, food

processing) and manufacturing process (e.g. Prod-

uct Development (PD), Supply Chain Management

(SCM), accounting). Also, the lean concept has been

changing from the original set of ‘hard’ tools for the

C2017 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Publishedby John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

580 P. Danese et al.

production area (e.g. Just in Time (JIT), kanban) to a

human-centric system approach universally applica-

ble to whatever process and context (i.e. Lean Man-

agement (LM)), where ‘hard’ tools are complemented

with ‘soft’ practices, such as team-working, train-

ing and auto-responsibility (Dabhilkar and ˚

Ahlstr¨

om

2013; Shah and Ward 2007). Consequently, the ben-

efits of lean implementation are numerous from both

the quantitative (e.g. improvementsin processing, cy-

cle and set-up times, reduction of queues and defects)

and qualitative points of view (e.g. employee satis-

faction, commitment, safe working environment).

Given this scenario, we believethat the momentum

is appropriate to address an updated state-of-the-art

of LM literature. In fact, in recent years there has

been increased interest in this field by academics and

practitioners worldwide, and LM research, especially

more recent, is extremely diverse and fragmented not

only in terms of issues explored, but also for method-

ologies adopted, contexts and paths of implementa-

tion, resulting in a heterogeneous body of literature

in terms of both subjects and quality level. Some

authors (i.e. Bhamu and Sangwan 2014; Jasti and

Kodali 2014, 2015b; Moyano-Fuentes and Sacrist´

an-

D´

ıaz 2012; Samuel et al. 2015) have recently pub-

lished in high-quality journal reviews of studies with

lean as the core topic. However, our review differs

from previous ones for several reasons (see also Sup-

porting information Table SA). First, unlike most of

previous reviews,we do not aim to study the evolution

of lean from the beginning to now, but the latest de-

velopments in the LM field. Thus, we concentrate on

a high number of LM-related papers (240) published

in a recent and relatively short period of time – from

January 2003 to December 2015 – also embracing the

years from 2013 to 2015 not yet analysed by other re-

views. Second, our study classifies and analyses LM

studies according to the use of different ‘theoreti-

cal perspectives’ and the variables proposed by Ed-

mondson and Mcmanus’s (2007) framework, useful

for studying a research life cycle, which is a novelty

compared with previous literature reviews. Third, we

use a structured and systematic approach following

Tranfield et al.’s (2003) guidelines for the systematic

literature review (SLR). In particular, thanks to this

procedure we have implemented a careful process for

selecting high-quality journals recognized as relevant

by the lean community.

These features allow our study to offer significant

contributions in the lean field. First, this SLR provides

a comprehensive and clear picture of recent trends

in LM literature by classifying and comparing lean

papers according to some interesting features such

as: journals where lean papers are published, year of

publication, authors of lean papers and their affiliation

country, context of the research (manufacturing vs.

service, and the specific sector analysed), country/ies

where empirical studies have been set, methodology

used (in terms of research approach, aim and collec-

tion methods) and content of the studies. On this basis,

this SLR not only offers a detailed overview inter ms

of number of lean articles over the years, journals that

have dedicated a consistent number of papers to lean,

and authors’ contribution to theoretical and empirical

research according to the author’s affiliation country,

but also goes into more detail by providing interest-

ing insights into: the distribution of papers that used

data collected in a single country or cross-country;

research contexts and issues most investigatedin gen-

eral and for each country; new contexts of implemen-

tation; most used research methodologies in general

and for each context; content evolution in terms of

main issues explored in recent years and new issues

addressed. In addition, this is the first SLR that con-

siders the use of theories in lean literature in order to:

(1) provide a clear description of which theoretical

perspectives are adopted in which lean studies; and

(2) encourage the use of various theories in lean stud-

ies to understand how different phenomena interact

with each other (Admundson 1998; Defee et al. 2010;

VanMaanen et al. 2007). The use of existing theories

to analyse/explain lean issues is of paramount impor-

tance, as they can help to increase understanding of

the dynamics occurring and disentangle the complex-

ity underlying a certain phenomenon.

Starting from this clear and comprehensive portrait

of recent LM literature, this paper identifies gaps in

knowledge,in ter ms of use of theoretical perspectives,

research contexts, countries investigated and content

of lean studies.

This study also develops an original framework

that classifies the researched issues into mature, in-

termediate and nascent, based on the research life-

cycle model by Edmondson and Mcmanus (2007,

p. 1160). In fact, LM being a heterogeneous research

area, we think that the common belief that ‘lean re-

search is in a mature phase’ provides a too general

and rough-cut perception of recent debate on LM.

Therefore, the proposed framework considers at a

micro-level each researched issue to identify those in

a nascent/explorative phase that require further inves-

tigation/conceptualization, those in an intermediate

phase that need to be tested and validated, and those

in a mature phase that can be the basis to create robust

C2017 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.