Today, global competition entails companies having an advantage in supply chain networks to pursue superior performance. This work examines the link between information technology (IT) capability with the firm performance by adopting a lean production approach, vendor-managed inventory, and supply chain practices. The study has surveyed the population of the manufacturing company in East Java, Indonesia, using a questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale. A total of 111 manufacturing companies (medium and large) were selected from 5420 manufacturing companies listed in the Industrial Department of East Java. The partial least square (PLS) technique was used to analyze the data, using the SmartPLS software version 3.3. Thirteen hypotheses in this study were developed to investigate. The result revealed that all hypotheses of direct relationship were supported. IT capability directly affects lean production, vendor managed inventory, and supply chain practices. Moreover, lean production, vendor-managed inventory, and supply chain practices improve firm performance. Further analysis also indicated that all hypotheses of indirect hypotheses were supported except hypothesis one hypothesis (H9). IT capability indirectly improves firm performance through lean production, vendor-managed inventory, and supply chain practices. The result provides insight for managers and policymakers on enhancing firm performance by improving its IT capability, adopting lean production, vendor-managed inventory, and supply chain practices. This research contributes to reinforcing the supply chain management theory.

One of the most important issues in production planning is to reduce waste materials as much as possible. This helps reduce all necessary expenses and increase productivity and efficiency. This paper presents an empirical investigation to find important factors for reaching lean production planning. The proposed study determines nine different factors including information technology, organization and leadership, human resources development, inventory management, total quality management, process management, equipment management, maintenance engineering. In order to find out the effects of these factors, the study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some managers in producer of radiator in Iran. Cronbach alpha is equal to 0.86, which validates the questionnaire. Using some statistical observations, the study has confirmed that all mentioned factors influences production planning, positively.

As one of the new producing approaches, lean production has brought in new opportunities for producers all around the world. Many producers have adopted the technique for surviving the growing world market. By combining competitive advantages, lean attributes, and lean enablers as three factors, the present study attempts to determine the most suitable enablers for improvement of lean attributes in a case study. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in fuzzy environment and House of Quality (HOQ) matrix, successfully employed for development of new products, are adopted as approach of the study. Weights of competitive advantages, lean attributes and enablers are calculated through fuzzy analysis hierarchy process (FAHP), while fuzzy logarithmic least square method (LLSM) is used in calculation of the weights. Throughout the methodology, fuzzy logic is the basis for translating linguistic judgments required for the relationships and correlation matrix to numerical values. Moreover, final ranking of lean enablers is represented through area ranking method and taking into account various techniques of decision makers’ risk. Finally, a case study in automotive industry is introduced to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed methodology.

With globalization, sweeping technological development, and increasing competition, customers are placing greater demands on manufacturers to increase quality, flexibility, on time delivery of product and less cost. Therefore, manufacturers must develop and maintain a high degree of coherence among competitive priorities, order winning criteria and improvement activities. Thus, the production managers are making an attempt to transform their organization by adopting familiar and beneficial management philosophies like cellular manufacturing (CM), lean manufacturing (LM), green manufacturing (GM), total quality management (TQM), agile manufacturing (AM), and just in time manufacturing (JIT). The main objective of this paper is to propose an optimal assembly method for an engine manufacturer’s assembly line in India. Currently, the Indian manufacturer is following traditional assembly method where the raw materials for assembly are kept along the sideways of conveyor line. It consumes more floor space, more work in process inventory, more operator's walking time and more operator's walking distance per day. In order to reduce the above mentioned wastes, lean kitting assembly is suggested by some managers. Another group of managers suggest JIT assembly as it consumes very less inventory cost compared to other types of assembly processes. Hence, a Multi-attribute decision making model namely analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to analyse the alternative assembly methods based on various important factors.