This work reviews the literature on Lean Manufacturing (LM). Until now, there was no complete literature review regarding this subject in the Operations Management literature. Based on this literature review it is proposed a LM classification system based on 4 main characteristics: methodology, comprehension, principles and enablers. The system is used to classify and to organize the papers. After that a general analyses of LM is performed. The LM analyses is based on 2 main points: i) a quantitative study of the methodology, comprehension, principles and enablers within LM papers; ii) a qualitative study regarding the main subjects and goals accomplished by the papers. The main contributions of this work are to contribute for mental clarification, communication and discovering new fields for research on LM.
Lean Manufacturing; review
