SOURCE:

Faculty: Management Sciences
Department: Business Administration

CONTRIBUTORS:

Moneme, P. C.
Nzewi, H. N.

ABSTRACT:

The persistent pressure to improve operational performance, maintain competitive advantage, and meet customers’ demands and expectations has forced manufacturing firms to continuously improve their business processes. Besides these global market pressures, Nigerian manufacturing sector is further plagued by other domestic constraints especially the deepen high cost of production, scarcity of resources, and unfavourable macroeconomic indices. In this increasing complexity of the business environment, Lean business strategy seems to be an ideal strategic option to confront the divergent problems facing the sector, since it emphasizes on value maximization through efficient and effective utilization of resources. Therefore, this study sets to examine the influence of Lean Business Strategy on Performance of Nigeria’s Manufacturing Sector. In pursuit of this broad objective, Descriptive survey research design was adopted. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study. For data analysis, Simple Regression Analysis was used to determine the influence of Lean Business Strategy on Nigerian Manufacturing Sector Performance. After the analysis of the data, the following major findings were made; The first model accepted the alternate hypothesis that Lean Technique has significant influence on the Cost Performance of the selected manufacturing firms with t-Statistics p-value < 1%. The second model revealed that Lean Critical Success Factor (CSF) has significant influence on the Quality Performance of the selected manufacturing firms with t-Statistics p-value < 1%. The third model agreed with alternate hypothesis that Lean Culture has significant influence on Contribution of Manufacturing Sector to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Nigeria with t-Statistics p-value < 1%. The fourth model confirmed that Lean sustainability has significant influence on Nigerian Manufacturing Sector Capacity Utilization with t-Statistics p-value < 5%. It was concluded that Lean business strategy is a management technique that supports manufacturing firms to fundamentally reposition their business processes to optimise resources, cut operational costs, become responsive, and customer focused. This implied that Nigerian manufacturing sector should consciously and proactively implements lean business strategy to achieve the best optimal cost structures, increased productivity, and improve quality of their products.