Effectiveness of Lean Manufacturing in the Electronics and Medical Devices Operations in Puerto Rico.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of lean manufacturing practices and how the utilization of this strategy has helped to improve operational performance in the areas of service, quality, productivity, and flexibility in the electronics and medical devices industries in Puerto Rico. The study also examined the impact transactional and transformational leadership style had in the implementation level of lean manufacturing practices. Two Likert type surveys were used: (a) a survey consisting of a series of questions pertaining to organization demographics, lean practices and organizational performance developed by Shah and (b) the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ 5X-Short) developed by Avolio and Bass. A one-Sample T test was conducted to compare the implementation level of lean manufacturing and service, quality, productivity and flexibility in the electronics and medical devices operations in Puerto Rico. While examining the p-value to determine whether a comparison existed between the implementation of lean manufacturing practices and productivity and the implementation of lean manufacturing practices and flexibility the researcher found a calculated p-value of .034 and .077 respectively. This was much lower than the .10 significant level required for the study. Thus, the test statistic failed to support the null hypothesis, concluding that implementation of lean manufacturing practices result in improvement in productivity and flexibility.