LEAN MANUFACTURING THROUGH VSM FOR ETHIOPIAN LEATHER INDUSTRY

Abstract

Globalization has created numerous problems for industries worldwide. Its influence has grown over the last few decades, affecting manufacturing industries' competitiveness and rendering them highly vulnerable. In such times any business's survival depends on its capability of competitiveness. For this reason, they require adopting modern management philosophies to improve their competitiveness. Several researchers claimed that one of the comprehensive management philosophies for achieving competitiveness is the realization of lean manufacturing (LM). The Toyota Production System (TPS) is the foundation of LM. It is a philosophy that emphasizes eliminating production wastes to maximize customer value and increase productivity. Manufacturing industries strive to adopt lean concepts to maximize their resources like staff, facilities, materials, and schedules to be economically effective. To achieve the goal of LM, it uses various tools and techniques. Scholars mention value stream mapping (VSM), 5S, total productive maintenance (TPM), just in time, kaizen, total quality management (TQM), cellular manufacturing, etc. However, most previous scholars' focus was on manufacturing industries with well-developed manufacturing systems in developed nations. Integrating LM to not-well developed manufacturing systems in developing countries is not addressed. And also, managers face difficulty in selecting the appropriate lean tools out of the many available LM tools for successful lean implementation. The research described in this thesis aims to examine and generate knowledge on how manufacturing industries integrate LM into their manufacturing systems for their competitive advantages. Accordingly, the purpose was to contribute to understanding how manufacturing industries use LM to enhance their competitiveness. This research focused on the leather products manufacturing industry (LPMI) of Ethiopia. It is struggling with low performance. One way to facilitate the sector's performance is by studying how much the organizations are using their resources effectively and efficiently. It helps organizations identify their critical resources, wastes that consume these resources and identify potential improvement areas. This, in turn, contributes to improving organizational performances and meeting the challenges of global competition.