Handbook of Management Scales/Customer involvement

Customer involvement (alpha > 0.7; composite reliability = 0.85; average variance extracted = 0.55) Description The research takes a step toward clarifying the concept of lean production and develops and validates a multi-dimensional measure of lean production. The 10 distinct dimensions of a lean system are continuous flow, customer involvement, employee involvement, JIT delivery by suppliers, pull, set up time reduction, statistical process control, supplier development, supplier feedback, and total productive/preventive maintenance. Definition Lean production is an integrated socio-technical system whose main objective is to eliminate waste by concurrently reducing or minimizing supplier, customer, and internal variability. This dimension of lean production is about focusing on a firm’s customers and their needs. Items Please indicate the extent of implementation of each of the following practices in your plant. (1) no implementation; (2) little implementation; (3) some implementation; (4) extensive implementation; (5) complete implementation. We frequently are in close contact with our customers. Our customers give us feedback on quality and delivery performance. Our customers are actively involved in current and future product offerings. Our customers are directly involved in current and future product offerings. Our customers frequently share current and future demand information with key marketing department. Source Shah/Ward (2007): Defining and developing measures of lean production. Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 785-805. Customer involvement (alpha = 0.672) Items We are frequently in close contact with customers. Our customers seldom visit our plant. (not used in Flynn/Flynn 1999) Our customers give us feedback on quality and delivery performance. Our customers are actively involved in the product design process. We strive to be highly responsive to our customers' needs. We regularly survey our customers' requirements. Source Morita/Flynn (1997): The linkage among management systems, practices and behaviour in successful manufacturing strategy. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 17, No. 10, pp. 967-993. Flynn/Flynn (1999): Information-Processing Alternatives for Coping with Manufacturing Environment Complexity. Decision Sciences, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 1021-1052.