Abstract

Lean production has become a necessity in today's world to face competition challenge in a changing work environment and striving for growth, survival and adaptation. Lean production has gained a lot of importance within the last two decades for the successes it achieved in many of the production and service organizations and became the main interest in the world of business.
From this point , this research sought to determine the effect of lean production system in operations performance in one of the Iraqi companies, the southern cement public company (Kufa cement factory), focusing on problem that can be defined in the following question: Does the lean production system affects in operations performance dimensions?
The research attempted to introduce a modern theoretical framework for the most significant works of the researchers and writers concerning the research variables as well as an analytical practical framework of the views of a sample of the leadership in the plant (manager, engineer, technician).
The sample size reached (100) individual representing the independent variable of lean production with its six dimensions (5S, total production maintenance, continuous improvement, value stream, kanaban, JIT), while the dependent variable is operations performance with its four dimensions (cost, quality, flexibility, delivery).
In the light of the research problem, many questions were answered; what are the dimensions of lean production? Are those dimensions found in the studied company ? Is there a correlation between lean production dimensions and operations performance dimensions? What is the level of lean production effect in operations performance?
Through the use of a set of statistical tools, the research reached a number of conclusions:
The research assumptions validity was proven through the correlation and effect found among research variables.
The research included number of recommendations, the most important of which is:
Encouraging the adoption of lean production philosophy through making use of the Japanese experience in this field which had a great and basic role in applying the lean production system achieving through that a competitive advantage for the Japanese products.