Achieving Leanness: The relationship of Lean practices with process exploitation and exploration

Lean is a socio-technical system that aims to increase operational effectiveness. It is widely assumed that lean contributes to the improvement of operational efficiency. However, there is limited knowledge of whether the improvement is achieved through processes of exploitation, exploration, or both. A survey of organisations adopting lean practices has shown that lean contributes to process control, incremental process improvement, and radical process improvement. The results help to explain the mechanisms through which lean affects the operational performance of organisations. The results show that lean facilitates both process exploration and exploitation and contributes to the ambidexterity of organisations.