A management system for sustainable lean implementation

Lean has become the leading method to pursue productivity improvement in Western companies. However, implementation success rate in industry is disappointing and not in line with the level of available documentation and support. This paper reports on the main findings from a 3-year 6-country European research project on testing a Lean Improvement method for Small Businesses. It then describes the structure of a management framework that could maximize the change of success for Lean implementation. This framework consists of 3 loops that provide the kind of information needed for a complete Lean implementation trajectory. It concludes with the research setup that will try to measure the impact of this framework in companies