Human resources, environmental risk and implementation of lean production. The case of the first tier suppliers of the automotive industry in Spain

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to expand the knowledge about the explanatory factors of the implementation process of lean production in industrial sectors by investigating the role of a series of internal and external factors of the environment of the company. More specifically, this thesis analyzes the role of human resources, the past performance of the company and environmental risk in the implementation process of lean production. This is achieved in two ways: 1) a systematic literature review on the role of human resources and their management in the implementation and consolidation process of lean production, and 2) through an empirical study conducted in a set of first tier suppliers of the automobile industry in Spain complemented with information extracted from secondary data sources. The results indicate that there are four different lines of research in the literature on the role of human resources and their management in the implementation process of lean production, showing gaps and challenges for future research. At the empirical level, the results reaffirm that lean production is an integrated socio-technical system, where both internal and external factors of the company must be managed to be successful in its implementation process