Today’s increasingly competitive global marketplace
has placed constant pressure on organisations to
adopt more effective and effi cient business strategies
that will ultimately lead them to increase their
performance measures. This can be achieved by
the continuous improvement and optimisation of
their processes, cost reduction of their products,
and the increasing of their outputs’ capacity with
satisfactory quality and rates (Hokoma et al, 2008).
Lean manufacturing is a philosophy, which has been
developed over a long period of time. The bases of
such philosophy are simple concepts through which
it has gained popularity. By understanding these
concepts and principles, lean manufacturing can be
understood easily (Badurdeen, 2006). As a result of
the automakers production system growth in the US
in that era, Toyoda Kiichiro who was the president
of Toyota Motor Company at that time responded
through creating a new, disciplined, process-oriented
system, which is known today as the “Toyota
Production System” (TPS) or “lean manufacturing”
(Abdullah, 2003). Within the lean manufacturing
philosophy, wastes are being discovered which leads
to their removal from the system so that the process of
value creation can be ensured within the organisation.