Handbook of Management Scales/Supplier development

Supplier development (alpha > 0.7; composite reliability = 0.74; average variance extracted = 0.33) 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 developing suppliers so they can be more involved in the production process of the focal firm. 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. Our suppliers are contractually committed to annual cost reductions. Our key suppliers are located in close proximity to our plants. We have corporate level communication on important issues with key suppliers. We take active steps to reduce the number of suppliers in each category. Our key suppliers manage our inventory. We evaluate suppliers on the basis of total cost and not per unit price. Source Shah/Ward (2007): Defining and developing measures of lean production. Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 785-805. Comments Average variance extracted is too low. The items are quite heterogenous and sometimes they appear to be too far from measuring supplier development. Related Scales Supplier evaluation systems Supplier quality management