Quantitative Techniques to Effectively Link Enterprise’s Performance and Lean Production

Abstract

Lean Production has been widely applied in the last decades and it is generally accepted as a tool to improve the operations of organisations. However, how to properly quantify such an improvement is still not clear from a global and integrated point of view. The fact that the data gathered from applying LP production techniques—at the operative level—should be somehow correlated with the enterprise strategic objectives one—at the strategic level—presents important challenges to decision makers. This papers sets up this research topic, covering some relevant scientific literature, moving then to define a classification of important factors to take into account when deciding what quantitative technique to apply to this topic. Then, following such a classification, it assesses some quantitative techniques that could be used, mainly broken down into either objective or subjective. From this evaluation, it concludes that, from the evaluated, the most appropriate technique to be used should be the Analytic Network Process.