House of lean for food processing SMEs

Failures in lean implementation tend to stem from a lack of understanding of sector-specific contextual factors and organizational factors. Current resources on lean implementation-such as where to get started or how to address the contextual factors-are limited, and no framework for answering these questions while catering to the needs of small and medium sized food processing enterprises. This paper propose a systematic lean implementation framework for food processing SMEs based on a longitudinal mixed research methodology. The key contribution of this paper is a framework, “House of Lean”, that takes into consideration the needs and characteristics of food processing SMEs.