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However, with the passage of time, these traditional sources of competitive advantage have become order-qualifying criteria. They are not significant order-winners anymore. Focus has now shifted to delivery (both speed and reliability) and flexibility as order-winning criteria. In this time of shifting competitive advantage, Indian manufacturing has a chance to enhance its capabilities and pose a competitive challenge to other nations in the region.

Because of the traditional focus on cost, operations in countries handling very large outsourced manufacturing operations have, in general, been slow to adopt lean manufacturing (Mukherjee & Sastry, 1996, p.9). This includes Korea, Taiwan and China. Thus, an opportunity is emerging for Indian manufacturing to deliver on these new sources of competitive advantage by adopting lean production techniques.

Defining 'Lean'

Before seeing how Indian manufacturing can benefit from lean production, we need to be clear on what exactly we mean by 'lean'. Since lean production incorporates a wide variety of activities, practices and techniques, there is an equally wide variety of ways in which lean production is defined and/or characterized, ranging from the very narrow and precise to the very broad. We see these different perspectives on lean below.

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* Contributed by -
Vaishnav Tadatmya Ashok,
IIM, Lucknow.