Interaction between Primary Resources and Root Causes in Lean Production Systems

A model to analyze lean systems reliability is developed based on the premises that lean production systems require four primary resources; materials, equipment, personnel, and schedule (Sawhney, R., Subburaman, K., Sonntag, C., Capizzi, C. and Rao, P.V., 2009). The four primary lean resources were independently analyzed, without due consideration to underlying relationships within each other. In this research, relationships and interaction between root-causes and lean primary resources were conceptualized and developed. The development applied a five-phase approach: 1. review of related literature, 2. decompositions of lean primary resources, 3. selection of consensus root causes items and questionnaire construct, 4. survey design and deployment, 5. collection and analysis of data and relationship and model building. This approach harnessed real world experiences of field experts. The result shows very significant levels of relationships and interactions within root-cause items and primary resources. This result, applied to lean implementation, is expected to enable experts to direct their efforts and resources to prevent undesired events that have the greatest impact on lean system.