DOES LEAN PRACTICES IMPLEMENTATION IMPACT ON COMPANY PERFORMANCE? A META-ANALYTICAL RESEARCH

Studies linking the use of lean practices to company performance have been increasing as markets are becoming more competitive and companies are eager for reducing waste and therefore implementing the Lean Management (LM) philosophy to improve performance. However, results from these studies have found various and different impacts and some light is needed. Extant literature was reviewed and, to achieve the research objective, a meta-analysis of correlations was carried out. The obtained results suggest a positive relationship between some lean practices and performance measures. Furthermore, the presence of moderators influencing the relationship between lean practices and performance outcomes is highlighted in our results. To our best knowledge, this is the first research that proposes a comparison of results from primary studies on Lean implementation, by analysing the linear relationship between lean practices and enterprise performance. It fills this gap and therefore represents an important contribution.