ABSTRACT
There are at least two important reasons for organizations to use lean: substantially cutting costs and providing competitive advantage. Basically, an organization chooses lean because of its benefits. Therefore, it can be said that lean can cut costs and provide a competitive advantage for the organization. In 2003, National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States conducted a survey on 40 manufacturing companies that used lean. They found that there were three fields indicating remarkable increases due to lean implementation. The improvements found were lead time reduction, productivity increase, reduction of work inventory in the process, inventory transition increase, capacity increase, and cycle time reduction, etc. The improvements also include order processing error reduction, and streamlining customer service function so that the customers do not need to wait longer, etc. The strategic improvements in strategic areas include costs reduction, etc.
