Abstract
Lean Production (LP) has been widely and successfully employed in mass production situations, showing high capabilities in reducing non-added-value activities, providing process stability, high qualitative production outputs and competitive production lead times. In engineer-to-order (ETO) situations, instead, the high customisation and variability of the context bring complexity and make it very difficult to fully employ the potential of LP. Over the years several studies focused on this issue, studying the application of LP practices to ETO situations. However, recent literature reviews underlined that there is a lack of research addressing the issue of whether to adopt, adapt or reject LP practices in ETO situations, and there is still an ongoing debate on this field. To fill the gaps identified in the existing literature, this study aims to study what LP practices are implemented in ETO situations, as well as how, using multiple case study research. An original data set was constructed using a purposely defined research protocol using structured interviews. The findings of this study show what LP practices are implemented successfully in ETO situations and what, on the other hand, are not easily implemented. Also, the study analyses how LP practices are implemented and what adaptations they must undergo to be effective within the ETO situations.
