Lean Manufacturing Practices in Tanzania: Exploring Awareness, Training and Capital Investment

With the growing competition among industries in the world, manufacturing industries are now forced to adopt the Lean Manufacturing philosophy to improve their competitive abilities. The adoption of the philosophy is very low in developing countries such as Tanzania, as is demonstrated with 1% of publications and the lack of knowledge and capital for Lean Manufacturing implementation causes this. Furthermore, the contribution of the sector to the Gross Domestic Product in Tanzania is low and stands at 8.4%. The study wants to bridge the gap in training, capital and awareness of Lean Manufacturing in Tanzania. Survey and purposive sampling techniques were adopted in the study. A structured questionnaire was used to collect responses from 243 manufacturing industries of all sizes. Descriptive and inferential statistics were analysed with SPSS version 27.0.1. The results demonstrated that there is inadequate training for micro and small industries as more than 80% have not received any training, have inadequate funds whereby more than 95% have not allocated funds and low awareness with a mean score of below 3 out of 5. The status is contrary in medium and large industries, with more than 75% training provision. It was also revealed that 90% of large industries have allocated funds while for medium ones it is more than 39% and the awareness for Lean Manufacturing is high as they have a mean score of above 3. The Lean practices with high levels of awareness to all manufacturing industries are 5s, concurrent engineering and visual management. The low level of awareness, training and insufficient capital for Lean Manufacturing affect the adoptions of the philosophy in Tanzania. Therefore, the study will assist practitioners and policymakers in setting strategies for bridging the gap in the adoption of Lean Manufacturing in developing countries such as Tanzania.