Browsing by Author "Alefari, Mudhafar"
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Item Open Access Lean manufacturing, leadership and employees: the case of UAE SME manufacturing companies(Taylor & Francis, 2020-06-21) Alefari, Mudhafar; Almanei, Mohammed; Salonitis, KonstantinosSuccessful lean implementation to SMEs poses great challenges. Although lean principles, tools and strategies for implementation are widely known and well documented, companies still struggle. In the present paper, the challenges for the SMEs in their lean journey are discussed, focusing on leadership styles and their impact on how employees perform during the lean transition. The aim of the paper is to determine the extent to which the main principles of lean manufacturing are understood and adopted in manufacturing companies in a developing country such as the United Arabic Emirates (UAE) through a structured questionnaire. The degree of implementing lean manufacturing is assessed and discussed against literature review findings. Furthermore, the impact of various leadership styles during the lean transition is investigated. A second survey is used for capturing the current state with regards the employee performance and the role of leadership in manufacturing SMEs in the UAE.Item Open Access Modelling manufacturing employees’ performance based on a system dynamics approach(Elsevier, 2018-06-27) Alefari, Mudhafar; Fernández Barahona, Angel María; Salonitis, KonstantinosEmployee performance is a key factor for the success of any modern organization. Employees are an asset that cannot be imitated by the competition, and therefore should be considered the most valuable resource. Unfortunately, they are also the hardest to control. Previous studies in manufacturing organizations have proven this. Performance improvement initiatives with a wide range of approaches are used in an attempt to improve employee performance. Motivation or organizational commitment are some examples of such programmes. However, the clear majority do not focus on the bigger picture. A conceptual model through system dynamics of the factors that affect employee performance and the different improvement initiatives is presented in this paper.Item Open Access The role of leadership in implementing lean manufacturing(Elsevier, 2017-07-11) Alefari, Mudhafar; Salonitis, Konstantinos; Xu, YuchunIt is widely accepted that for the successful implementation of lean manufacturing, the senior management commitment is of great importance. However, the lean journey is usually a long one, and eventually management commitment creeps. Furthermore, the involvement of employees in daily improvements is also critical for the success of implementation. Lean leadership can be considered as a way of sustaining and improving the employee performance in lean production systems. In the present study, a thorough literature review is presented focusing in reviewing the principles of lean leadership and the practices that can lead in improving the employee performance. Furthermore, the characteristics and qualities of lean leader are discussed Paper originally presented at Manufacturing Systems 4.0 – Proceedings of the 50th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems, held 3 – 5 May, 2017, Taichung City, Taiwan.Item Open Access A system dynamics model of employees’ performance(MDPI, 2020-08-12) Alefari, Mudhafar; Almanei, Mohammed; Salonitis, KonstantinosEmployee performance is dynamic and can have great impact on the overall performance of any company and its sustainability. A number of factors that can be controlled by the company can affect the employees’ performance. The present paper starts with a thorough literature review for identifying these key driving in order to develop a system dynamics models that will be able to assess different improvement scenarios and initiatives. Based on causal loop diagrams, stock and flow diagrams are developed and solved using system dynamics theory. The model developed can be used for organizations to assess the impact of different improvement initiatives.