The role of management in lean implementation: evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate how soft lean practices moderate the performance effects of hard lean practices. The authors provide new evidence from the pharmaceutical industry, which is characterized by a highly regulated and technical environment and has been largely uncharted in the lean literature.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on a review of the literature, the authors define a set of soft and hard lean practices. The authors test the hypotheses using factor analysis and moderated hierarchical linear
regression on a unique dataset containing survey data and real performance measures of 351 pharmaceutical plants.
Findings – The results show that soft lean practices can be both enabling and constraining. When management engages in performance measurement, visualisation and employee empowerment the
relationship between hard lean practices and performance is positively moderated. On the other hand, when managers emphasise goal setting and work standardisation the performance outcomes are reduced.