Insights from a Top-Down Lean Subprogram Deployment in a Production Group: A Tactical Perspective

Abstract

Global production companies spend a noticeable amount of resources on developing lean subprograms deployed within the corporate group. Despite the objective of achieving overall improvements, the expected performance might default due to inefficient deployment processes. Unforeseen lag or resistance to centralized programs has in previous studies shown to be influenced by contextual characteristics of the recipient, such as absorptive capacity, national culture, and factory size. How should deployment plans be designed while considering the characteristics within the corporate group? The research purpose here, is to explore the intentions and reasoning behind the designed deployment plan within a corporate group. Based on insights from a real case, this paper presents three various tactical deployment approaches of possible eight theoretical configurations, here called ‘horizontal,’ ‘parallel,’ and ‘delegated’ deployment. They differ principally by cascading approach, degree of freedom, and centralization of targets. The concept of ‘deployment tactics’ is introduced as a way to understand how the deployment plans are arranged given the contextual characteristics, and shows that the context dependency in lean subprogram deployment can be managed in various ways within a company.