Impact of lean manufacturing on inventory turnover performances: evidence from the Sri Lankan apparel industry

Abstract

Evaluating and systematically identifying the impact of lean manufacturing has become crucial to organizations, especially in the apparel industry, where lean navigation is primarily seen. This study aims to critically evaluate the impact of lean manufacturing practices on inventory turnover performance. This research analyzes inter-related lean practices using an addictive index model that shows the multi-dimensional face of lean manufacturing. This research is based on just-in-time lean bundle, total quality management lean bundle, and total productive maintenance lean bundle. Further, relationships between these bundles and inventory turnover performance have been critically evaluated through a cross-sectional design with data collected from 72 respondents by distributing an online questionnaire to the selected sample using a judgmental sampling method. The collected data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science software. The results indicate that all three lean practice bundles have a strong and significant relationship with inventory turnover performances. The conceptual model developed to study this research was identified with a high model fitness. This research recommends implementing all lean manufacturing practices together to improve the inventory turnover performance because the total model regression was higher than the values of the independent correlations between independent and dependent variables.