Impact of Lean Practices on Flexibility Performance in

Malaysia oil and gas sector

Khalid bin Hashim

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1.1 Introduction
According to Abbass and Hussain, (2016) stated that globalization added new challenges
in manufacturing industry, customer stresses more variety at less cost and improved
quality with fast delivery rate. Consequently manufacturing entities find out ways of
producing more at minimal cost. To cope up these challenges lean production is a proven
way. In order to continue in the globalized era of innovative practices, manufacturing
projects in developing countries are now striving for adopting the innovative practice for
manufacturing projects operations in order to survive in intensive market competition.
Currently, unstable business situation, restricted resources and instability in demand are
the main encounters of the automotive industry worldwide (Rusalbiah, 2015). Incremental
developments and current procedures, procedures, product and services are refers to
continuous improvement (Zubi, 2015) and reflect higher management dedication toward
groundbreaking thinking like lean production (Alkalha et al., 2012; Al-Zubi & Khamees,
2014). Azadegan et al. (2013) quantified that lean manufacturing literature lacks the
researches in manufacturing projects sector for assessing the lean practices and flexibility
performance by focusing the environmental corns as the indirect effect this association of
variables in innovative trends and high market competition call for further studies to
investigate this research gap. Objectives are:
1 To evaluate the impact of pull system on flexibility performances of
manufacturing projects.
2 To find the impact of setup time reduction on flexibility performances of
manufacturing projects.
3 To research the impact of continuous improvement on flexibility performances of
manufacturing projects.
1.2 Significance of the research study
This study will assess the implementations of lean manufacturing and evaluate its effect
on the flexibility presentation of automobile industry in Malaysia. Moreover this study
will ration the indirect effect of environmental dynamics; this aspect will almost support
the working individuals for seeing these environmental factors while on job
performances. This study will be very helpful for incoming young researchers to get
assistance in Malaysia perspective and move this topic in thorough study. The
characteristic significance of this study is that this the first kind of study that is going to
be conducted din Malaysia context, the results of this study will assist many professionals
in diverse areas.

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Definitions
1-Lean production
Abbass and Hussain, (2016) stated that lean is a rational approach and mainly focus on
cost, delivery, continuously improvement, and safety and all these objectives attained by
creating flow, increasing the efficiency and eliminating waste. High quality system that
produce finished products according to customers demands with no or slight wastage.

2-Pull System
Pull system is the heart of lean manufacturing the basic concept is that products are
produce when they are needed to be produced not before and to avoid high levels of
inventory and over-production (Al-Zubi, 2015).

3-Performance
Performance is the group capability to develop product on time, fast delivery of the
product, consistent scheduling and flexible performance (Heizer et al., 2013).
Lean-performance relationship
M. Bevilacqua et al. (2016) studied the relationship among lean practices (human
resource management, supplier management, just-in-time and total quality management),
operational responsiveness (product mix, product innovation and time effectiveness) and
company growth using structural equation modeling. Moreover, product mix and time
effectiveness have positive influence on company growth performance.
Supachart, (2016) studied the impact of lean practice on new product development (NPD)
process performance. Three performance dimensions; time, cost and quality have been
used to measure the NPD process performance. The research result depict that lean
management practices (LMP) with high snappish values to be implemented to enhance
the supply chain operational performance. Openda (2013) studied the relationship
between lean manufacturing practices and organizational performance.
SMED approach of production. Shingo has highlighted that the switch over time for
production could be minimized that is directly linked with the lot size and process
expenses(Shiferaw, 2015). Alves and tenera (2009) research study revealed that SMED
with other classic tools like chart analysis and statistical analysis, providing positive
outcomes for the companies. Ramiz and Tamer (2014) studied the performance
improvement using SMED methodology, the outcome showed that SMED can generate
saving range from 5 to 15 percent in running cost and at the same time enhance
production capacity.
D.Seth et al. (2017) studied the application of value-stream-mapping for lean and cycle
time reduction. The comprehensive studies of published research work, the most effectual
sector for implementing lean practices is automobile manufacturing. This research study
will serve a foundation stone for companies performance improvement after
implementing core lean practices in automobile manufacturing in Malaysia.
M. Bevilacqua et al. (2016) employed pull production/Kanban as an observed variable for
the implementation of JIT practices. Belekoukias et al. (2014) empirical results indicate
that continuous improvement has positive and significant effect on quality and speed of
organization and statistically correlate with quality, speed, dependent, flexibility and cost.
The statistical result confirmed that positive association exist between setup time
reduction and flexibility performance. M. Bevilacqua et al. (2016) taken continuous
improvement as an independent variable and investigate its impact on operational
performance.

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Research methodology/design
Research philosophy
Positivist research approach generally involves in empirical testing, and promotes the idea
of experimentation and testing to confirm or reject hypotheses, putting new facts together
to create new principles and finally generate a value free research (Greener, 2008). This
research suggests to instrument the Interpretivism philosophy since this research range is
a complex manufacturing environment and the objective of the research is studying the
composite lean manufacturing practices for flexible performance.
Research Approach
This study has targeted to implement the quantitative technique for analyzing the direct
and indirect effect of factors for successful lean performances at automobile car
manufacturers in Malaysia.

Research Strategy
In research design, strategy of research has been considered as the key concept to pursue
the targeted objectives and answering the research questions. Researchers have
highlighted the five major research strategies i.e. case studies, surveys, experiments,
histories and archival analysis. This study has followed the survey as research strategy for
assessing the role of lean manufacturing practices on flexibility performance in
automobile manufacturing Malaysia.
Pilot testing
According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, the results of pilot testing showed that all
research constructs have valid Cronbach's -coefficient. The recommended value of
0.60 indicating that constructs are valid and internally consistent.

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Analyses
All the variables show good relationship in above table. The relationship between pull
system and flexibility performance is significant, p-value less than 0.05, as the impact of
pull system on flexibility performance is moderate with variance of 48% in 2-tailed.
The association between setup time reduction and flexibility performance is strong with
64% variance at significance level (p-value) less than 0.05. The model summary table
shows the overall fit statistics. The researcher found that the R 2 of pull system and
flexibility performance is 0.229 with adjusted R2 is 0.236. The value of R2 demonstrate
that the liner regression explains 23.9% of the variance in the data.
The ANOVA table check, how well the model fits the data. The significance value of F
statistic is less than 0.05, which means that independent variable do a good job in
explaining the variation in the dependent variable. The value of F (1,215)= 27.349 at 0.00
significance level. The researcher found the liner regression analysis estimates the liner
regression function by regression equation;
Y= 1.220+0.624(X) The coefficient table shows the intercept, intercept of the model,
regression coefficient and the significance of variables.
Findings
Force framework assumes an indispensable part towards firms execution change. On the
premise of hypothetical and exact outcome, the specialist came to on the conclusion that
the execution of assembling concerns essentially relies upon pull framework. Viable draw
framework have increment the business benefit and adequacy. After the analysis of the
collected questionnaire of 230 personnel of different manufacturing concerns in
automobile sector, the researcher concluded that most of the respondents confirmed that
impact of lean practices on performance is positive and significant.
Implications
As a result, managers will be capable of taking more effective and better decisions about
implementation of lean methods. Therefore, this research study will guide businesses to
prioritize the lean tools and methods according to the performance measures they
consider more intentionally significant to improve.
The successful execution of lean practices, the practices should be holistically
implemented because all the attributes are interdependent and equally important. This
research work will become an opening step for researchers in coping with the very few
empirical research studies conducted in developing countries like Malaysia.
Furthermore, response obtained from respondents for the analysis is comparable to other
similar research work, it can be regarded as limited. The findings are based on
respondents experience of selected automobile manufacturer in Malaysia, should not be
construed as indicative of the features of Malaysia automobile manufacturer in general.
Further research has an interesting avenue to extend model to include moderating
variables such as environmental dynamism, technological turbulence and competitive
intensity.

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