Relationship Between Operational Performance and Help Chain Critical Success Factors

One of the main pillars of Lean Manufacturing (LM) is the capacity to stop processes whenever problems are identified, correcting them before they move downstream; which is called jidoka. Within the concept of jidoka, one of the practices of control and elimination of waste is the help chain (HC). Few evidences have been found in the literature with regards to HC implementation, and the existent ones poorly describe how to operate, systematize and manage the HC in companies undergoing a LM implementation. In this paper we propose an instrument for assessing the relationships between the critical success factors (CSF) that promote HC, providing means to enhance operational efficiency and quality performance in companies undergoing LM implementation. The aforementioned relationships were determined and validated through a survey carried out with 50 Brazilian companies. Identifying relevant relationships between CSF and performance indicators may contribute to specify the context in which problems are expected to occur. Additionally, the study focuses on two contextual variables: (i) size of the company and (ii) time of lean implementation. Our results show that these size of the company and CSF have a significant relationship with quality. However, for efficiency, time of lean implementation seems to be significantly important to predict its performance.