An Empirical Study on The Impact of Environmental Uncertainty on The Lean Practices of Small Manufacturing Firms - A Supply Chain Perspective

Abstract

Supply chain management is the buzz word in today’s business world. All efforts are being made to improve supply chain, practices so that the chain can be well integrated. This is the only way the firms can jointly respond to the whims and fancies of the final customer. This research Paper is a study of the impact of logistics practices of small manufacturing firms on the integration of the supply chain. The scope of the research is the small manufacturing industries in Coimbatore district. A sample of 75 firms has been selected from a list of 792 firms who are members of  Coimbatore District Small Scale Industries Association of India. The environmental uncertainty and the lean practices of these firms have been measured using instruments that have already been validated in similar research papers. Structural equation modeling has been used to empirically validate the hypothesis proposed in the paper. This is one of the first research initiatives on empirical testing of supply chain models in Indian scenario. The reliability of the constructs has been. tested using SPSS package (resulting in purified scales) and the validities have been tested using Visual PLS package. The hypothesis proposed that environmental uncertainty influences the lean practices of a firm has been
validated using Visual PLS package. This paper goes a long way in emphasizing the impact of environmental uncertainty on the lean practices followed by small manufacturing firms.