Are Lean practices the solution to improve business performance in Mexico's manufacturing industry?

Abstract

Lean practices are considered in the literature as a work philosophy that allows organizations to iden-tify and eliminate those activities that do not gen-erate value, commonly called waste, which have an impact not only on production processes, but also on supply chain, and in the level of business per-formance. However, there are relatively few stud-ies published in the literature that have analyzed and discussed the relationship and consequences of the application of Lean practices and their effects on Lean supply chain, and business performance. Therefore, the essential objective of this study is to fill the existing gap in the current literature and empirically test the positive association between Lean practices, Lean supply chain, and business performance, for which a survey was distributed to a sample of 460 manufacturing companies of the automotive industry in Mexico, and the proposed research model was validated using PLS-SEM. The results obtained suggest that Lean practices have a positive impact on business performance and Lean supply chain, just as Lean supply chain also have a positive impact on business performance.