抄録
In the new era of the global market, Small and Medium Industry (SMI) have to embark in business strategy such as lean manufacturing implementation in order to survive and stay longer in the market. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore to what extent the lean manufacturing has been adopted by SMIs in West Coast Sabah. Questionnaires survey with Likert scale was used to explore the extent of lean manufacturing implementation. Samples from this study were taken from SMIs that registered with Ministry of Industrial Development (MID) Sabah and focused on West Coast Sabah. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 18.0) was used to analyze the data and perform some statistical analysis of frequency percentage and mean. Through these findings, the result revealed that small percentage of the companies has implemented lean manufacturing. The remaining high percentage of the companies believed not yet taken lean initiatives. It is found that the main motivation which influenced them to implement lean manufacturing is productivity. The level of lean tools implementation by SMIs showed that a fairly high percentage on the basic lean tools adoption happened in many organizations. Findings from this study also showed that barriers such as the effort required to change mindset, longer time and more effort required for lean implementation, attitude of shop floor employees and lack of lean awareness, are the obstacles that delaying the lean manufacturing implementation on SMIs in West Coast Sabah.
