Zsolt Matyusz

Lean production and leadership attributes – the case of Hungarian production managers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate leadership attributes that contribute to or inhibit the successful adaptation of lean techniques. Design/methodology/approach – Using leadership attributes of the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project, this paper develops an ideal leadership profile of a production manager who aims to develop a lean production system (based on Liker’s seminal work in 2004). Five hypotheses related to contributor and inhibitor leadership behaviors and their associated leadership attributes are analyzed using survey data based on a PLS model. Findings – According to the results, the proposed conceptual leadership profile, in which leadership attributes are divided into two sets (contributors and inhibitors), required modification. The authors identified five distinct leadership behaviors (specific interrelated sets of leadership attributes). Two of the five leadership behaviors (communicative and micromanager) for production managers...

The Impact of Lean Management on Business Level Performance and Competitiveness

In this paper we describe a model that investigates the impact of lean management on business competitiveness. We hypothesize that business competitiveness depends on organizational competences (including both the static level of operational capability and the dynamic capabilities of improving and adapting to changing internal and external conditions) and business performance. The lean literature provides an unbalanced picture of the elements of business competitiveness: while several researches discuss the impact of lean on static operational measures, there are much less studies about the relationship between lean and 1) organizational changes and responsiveness, and between lean and 2) business performance. In the empirical part of our paper we focus on the latter issues using both case studies and questionnaires. With our case based research (using two original cases and relying on several ECCH cases) we can clearly highlight how lean affects, through employees, organizational responsiveness and how it leads towards higher business competitiveness. Our analysis is unique in the sense that we could relate the casebased analysis to the perspective of employees, since in our original cases several employees (83 and 97) filled in a questionnaire that showed the impact of lean tools and methods on them, as well as their opinion about the improvements both at operational and business levels.

The Impact of Technological Change and OIPs on Lead Time Reduction

The paper examines the effect of technological change on operations improvement programs (OIPs) and operational performance. Previous studies in the field of operations management seldom took into account how the technological change rate of the industry affects the use of manufacturing programs and the resulting performance despite the importance of technological innovation in manufacturing. Our goal was to confirm empirically that plants with different level of achieved lead time reduction used certain OIPs to a different extent. We also analyzed how the technological change rate of the industry affects the use of OIPs. We used ANOVA and multiway ANOVA to confirm our hypotheses. Data were acquired through the fifth round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS), which contains more than 550 companies from the ISIC sectors 28–35. We found that companies with effective lead time reduction implemented OIPs to a greater extent, and also process technology changes have a higher impact on the use of OIPs than product technology changes.

Introduction: The Nature and Structure of the Inventory Problem

This part is an introduction of the concept and role of inventories in the economy. We explain why holding inventories is a necessary component of economic activity and why item-level, firm-level and national-level inventories present themselves as natural focuses of analysis. Reasons of holding inventories on these three levels are discussed. Item-level inventories are hold to meet specific demand components, firm-level inventories are subject to company management as an important contribution to smooth and cost-effective operation, while national inventories are aggregates of lower-level inventories influenced by the structure of the economy and economic policy factors. Our attention is focused in this book on national inventories, three characteristics of which can be analysed: level, change and fluctuation. We provide reasons why we find analysing long-term trends of national inventories as a useful contribution to our general knowledge of operation of the economies.

Analysis of Inventory Behaviour of OECD Countries

The most aggregate view of inventory investment tendencies of our set of countries is the one looking at the average of country-wise annual inventory investment over the investigated time horizon. Having the complete data set of the 20 TMEs for the full time horizon, it is possible to see the main tendencies. In Sect. 4.1, we analyse the aggregate inventory behaviour. We start with the 20 TMEs over the full time horizon, and then, we close in on the second sub-period and add the other 6 TMEs and 6 PSEs to the set of countries. The focus is on the examination of the mean and standard deviation of aggregate dI/GDP. After that, we continue with a country-level analysis of dI/GDP, again investigating the 20 TMEs first, and then add the other countries. We explore the main tendencies through descriptive statistics, and we visualize the relationship between the mean and standard deviation of dI/GDP.

Inventory Developments in Individual Countries

In this part, we take the 32 countries in the sample one by one and provide an overview of their economy from the inventory researcher’s point of view. The purpose of the chapter is to give a background for interpreting and analysing results about individual countries shown in various chapters of the book. Therefore, this chapter serves as kind of a reference background for the interpretation and evaluation of different country results.

Stability of Macroeconomic Variables

In Chap. 4, we have seen some important characteristics of long-term inventory processes. If we want to see the relationship of these to the other GDP components, we have to examine long-term characteristics not only the GDP components but also some other macroeconomic factors, which according to previous research are in close relationship with inventories. So, in this section, we take a closer look at the factors listed in Sect. 3.1: components of the GDP (private and government consumption, gross fixed capital formation, exports and imports), growth, per capita GDP as an indicator for development and indicators of structural characteristics (manufacturing and trade sectors, openness, centralization of income).