A statistical analysis of lean practices, and impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan

The main purpose of any economic investment is to get profit at the end. Investors and business holders invest in business or shares for wealth maximization. As the investment in large companies bears complexities, which influences investors to invest in small or medium enterprises which converts into medium or large companies at the later stage with profitability. The increasing competition because of the globalization is forcing SMEs to seek new methodologies and process for production and management. One of the methodologies which is gaining importance among manufacturing and service industries is Lean thinking. As the world is gaining much advancement in the lean manufacturing techniques. Pakistani SMEs are still far behind in this race. The purpose of this research is to analyze the lean implementation status in Pakistani SMEs. To get the insights of implemented lean practices, its benefits , barriers and critical success factors of lean in Pakistan SMEs, A survey methodology was used to collect the data from Small Medium Enterprise in Pakistan. This study will provide a base for Pakistani SMEs to analyze their position as compared to the other SMEs and help them to improve their performance in terms of lean practices. Also it will help future researchers working in Lean implementation to prepare a road map to eradicate the hurdles in Lean implementation in Pakistani SMEs. This research summarizes that Lean implementation needs to start from adopting basic lean tools. And while implementing lean in the companies there will be lots of barriers faced by companies which will show a negative influence on the lean implementation but those barriers can be overcome by working on some critical success factors which will have positive affect on the implementation of lean. The successful lean implementation will bring benefits to the SMEs and will affect different aspects of an organizations performance, in terms of Operations performance and business performance.