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The entry of global Fortune 500 companies provided opportunities for the manufacturing sector but also put pressure for maintaining competitiveness. Indian vendors were encouraged to adopt Lean Manufacturing practices to provide the best mix of quality, price and delivery requirements. It also provided the option of entering the lucrative export markets.

4.2 Challenges of Implementing Lean in India

India has started off late in the implementation of Lean Manufacturing practices. Despite the obvious benefits, there have been few adopters of lean manufacturing in India. Adoption has been slow partly on account of operational, infrastructural and procedural bottlenecks as well as the lack of internalization of lean concepts. Top management conviction and commitment play a very crucial role in such change management exercises.

Inspite of the multitude of challenges, specific Indian firms have been very successful at implementing lean manufacturing. It naturally raises questions on practices followed in India to manage these challenges? The answer is an 'Indianized form of JIT.

It is often argued that the only difference between firms that implement lean and those that do not is the management attitude with other factors having a little role to play. We believe that this is not entirely true. Though management attitude is a key differentiator, there are other context-specific challenges, especially in the developing countries which prevent implementation of lean manufacturing in the conventional form that we know of. We have enumerated some specific challenges that Indian firms have faced in lean manufacturing and the unique solutions which have been adapted to implement the "Indianized" form of lean manufacturing.

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* Contributed by -
Amandeep S. Bedi & Namit Puri,
Indian School of Business (ISB),
Hyderabad.