Supplier integration strategy for lean manufacturing adoption in electronic‐enabled supply chains

The purpose of this study is to formulate supplier integration strategy with the aim to eliminate Ohno's manufacturing wastes and empirically examines its influence on lean manufacturing adoption in electronic‐enabled manufacturing supply chains (EMSC).

The proposed theoretical model is tested with the survey data obtained from 558 manufacturers in 17 countries which is stratified into two groups of small/large firms for measuring the significance of measurements.

The influential factors comprising the supplier integration strategy, i.e. information sharing, e‐business systems and policy‐based supplier selection, have positive influence on the long‐term lean manufacturing adoption in small‐ and medium‐sized firms. Besides, the results reveal that manufacturers may commit ongoing use of lean manufacturing only if it has been using regularly.

The study is conducted from the stand point of a manufacturing firm. Hence, the constructs are not appropriate for distributors and retailers. Besides, the concepts measured in the study can only be generalized to small‐ and medium‐sized firms.

Implementing supply strategy in practice requires the collaboration of manufacturers and suppliers, and manufacturers are in better position to select the suppliers in favor to the implementation of lean manufacturing in EMSC. Also, small manufacturers tend to adopt lean manufacturing along with relevant supplier integration tactics due to having less complex organizational structure.

There is a scarcity of papers that study the impact of supplier integration on lean manufacturing through combining practitioner's lean implementation methodology and academia's decision theory. This paper is beneficial to manufacturers who intend to revise their e‐supply strategy in coping with sustainable imitative in recessionary time.