Formalisation of Information Flows to Support Lean Manufacturing Implementation: Study of High-Variety, Low-Volume Manufacturing in a High-Cost Country

Today’s global competition forces manufacturing companies to continuously seek ways to improve their operational performance. In high-cost countries, such as Finland, manufacturers need to look for sources of more sustained competitive advantage and higher value added. Lean manufacturing is commonly agreed to be one of the most prominent approaches to achieve such operative performance. Although originally designed for mass production, today lean manufacturing is increasingly applied across different fields, providing significant benefits to the operative environments. However, implementing lean manufacturing is seen as challenging. High-variety, low-volume manufacturing in particular, with an earlier customer order decoupling point than in mass production, faces issues when aiming towards lean manufacturing. Currently, the literature lacks supportive frameworks for lean manufacturing implementation for high-variety, low-volume manufacturers in high-cost countries. This study addresses that shortcoming and aims to provide a means to support lean manufacturing within this context.

The study follows the constructive research approach through which the concept of a novel method is developed, in this case, the Information Flow Modelling method. The concept was tested in product development and production development projects in two simulated pilot case studies and seven industrial case studies in Finnish manufacturing companies. The study begins with a literature review of the three research domains of lean manufacturing, project management and engineering design. A synthesis of an initial version of the method was formulated based on the literature review. This is followed by empirical research in case studies, where action design research was applied to systematise method development and case study research was applied in collecting and analysing the case study data. The research results provide a formalised version of the developed method and theoretical linkages to the research domains.

The results of the research provide theoretical and practical contributions to the very recent and topical discussions on lean manufacturing. As the primary result, a novel concept is proposed for steering and improving systems-level development of product development and production. The method provides concrete and systematic steps, tools, techniques and guidelines to plan, analyse, synthesise, solve problems and steer development actions in complex and multidisciplinary projects in product development and production. The method was verified and found useful in industry. In addition, the research results provide a new, more detailed reference model for lean manufacturing in the high-variety, low-volume context as well as theoretical explanations of how formalised information flows support the aims of sustained lean manufacturing paradigm implementation.

Scientifically, the results are significant because formalised knowledge-based information flows have not previously been shown to be useful in the systematic development of manufacturing systems. The results even suggest that prioritising information flows in manufacturing systems is equally as important in lean manufacturing as conventional lean manufacturing views on optimising value added, decreasing waste, creating flow and controlling quality. The Information Flow Modelling method is a partial solution that fills the gap for the lean implementation challenges identified in the literature.

For industry, the research results are significant because they offer a practical coordination and development method to support firms’ long-term lean manufacturing implementation aims. The method is especially useful to be used in solving complex, multidisciplinary and systemically large problems. The research shows that high-variety, low-volume manufacturers can achieve lean manufacturing performance gains both in production and product development. The Information Flow Modelling method increases manufacturers’ abilities for more holistic value-driven development of their manufacturing systems, which prevents sub-optimisation.

The developed method has the potential to become a lean practice for industry and consultants in the future. However, the Information Flow Modelling method still requires development steps before it can be applied on a large scale. Future studies should focus on applying the method as part of long-term manufacturing system development programmes, collecting quantitative data on the benefits of using the method and describing guidelines for systematic use of the method.