Purpose: There is convincing evidence that companies need a special form of leadership to succeed with lean transformations. The general advice for lean leaders, however, is often obvious or unrealistic. The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss specific lean leadership practices for...

Purpose: Manufacturers seek to innovate and improve processes using new digital technologies. However, knowledge about these new technologies often resides outside a firm's boundaries. The authors draw on the concept of absorptive capacity and the literature on open innovation to explore the...

Purpose: In this paper, the authors empirically investigate under which conditions production network management is effective to improve manufacturers' financial performance. For this, the authors explore contingencies between production networks and the three key dimensions of organizational...

We examine how management control practices relate to the implementation of a corporate lean program at the factory level. Our empirical analysis uses data from a large manufacturing firm that is implementing a corporate lean program in its global plant network. We find that using dedicated...

Inspired by the Toyota Production System, many multinational manufacturers have recently developed their own company-specific production systems. While there is a general consensus that these systems can boost plant performance, the literature does not offer an explanation for the pattern of...

Often modeled after the Toyota Production System, corporate “lean” programs — by which we mean programs that find and eliminate unproductive activities while increasing value creation — can be powerful instruments for improving the performance of manufacturing plants. Successful lean...

To facilitate the implementation of lean production, practitioners and researchers have suggested an array of critical success factors. However, despite a broad consensus about what needs to be done, companies still struggle to implement lean. Contingency theory posits the explanation that the...

Purpose: To advance the productivity of all plants in the network, multinational corporations develop and deploy multi-plant improvement programmes. In this paper, we systematically review and synthesise the emerging literature on multi-plant improvement programmes. Methodology: Through a...