IMPROVING BUSINESS VALUE BY IMPLEMENTATION OF LEAN MANUFACTURING: AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN VIETNAM

Nowadays, in globalization industries are adopting new techniques and tools to produce goods for sustainability. However, manufacturing industries are facing challenges to minimize operations costs, market inconsistency, competition, and variance demands. Lean practice helps sustainability of the industries by doing more with less resources through elimination of non-value-added activities to maintain effectiveness and profitability. A study uses the method of survey to identify factors for effective implementation of the lean manufacturing. Two industries producing plastics, metals, textiles, woods, biscuits, and bread products were selected for the study. The results revealed that manufacturing planning and control, new product development, process and equipment, concurrent engineering, workforce management, customer relationship, and supplier relationship are positive factors for the adoption of lean practice in Vietnam. However, a lean model indicates that concurrent engineering has the highest correlation to lean practice whereas new product development has the lowest significance. The new product development is not common because most industries have a lack of innovation, limited technology, less desire of customers on changes of product features, dearth of research and development culture, lack of desire from top management, inadequate resources, and a fear of failure for new products. It was advised that effective application of lean factors enable companies to map risk of non-value-added activities and improve business value.