Study of SME employees’ awareness level on lean manufacturing and ergonomics implementation in Malaysian and Indonesian production environments

SMEs are small to medium-sized businesses with relatively fewer workers and lower revenues than large companies. However, SMEs also contribute to the local economic growth of a region, so the smooth production process needs to be considered to increase productivity. Applying lean manufacturing (LM) and Ergonomics concepts in the production process is critical because it can overcome smooth production and maintain the health and safety of SMEs workers. LM focuses on minimizing waste, while ergonomics focuses on humans as a source of energy in the smooth running of production activities. So, this study aims to measure the level of understanding of Malaysian and Indonesian SMEs workers on applying LM and Ergonomics concepts on the production floor and determine the effect of these two concepts using the SPSS and SmartPLS4 applications. SPSS serves to measure the validity, reliability and mean for the category of workers' understanding of LM and Ergonomics. SmartPLS4 helps us understand the influence of the two concepts. Based on the calculation of the mean for each variable of LM and ergonomics, it is found that Malaysian workers understand enough compared to Indonesian SMEs workers. As for the effect, Ergonomics has a significant influence on LM.