(LEI: Cambridge, Massachusetts) -- Middle management resistance to change is now the No. 1 obstacle to implementing lean production, according to a survey conducted by the Lean Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit management research center. Respondents were asked to select all applicable obstacles from a list of 12 possibilities. Members also were polled on industry trends and the implementation level of their lean transformations. The survey was distributed electronically to 77,200 businesspeople and had 2,444 respondents.

Middle management resistance was cited by 36.1 percent of respondents in LEI’s annual survey about lean business system implementation in the United States. The top-three obstacles to implementation were middle management resistance (36 percent), lack of implementation know-how (31 percent), and employee resistance (27.7 percent).

This was in contrast to last year’s survey, which found backsliding to the old ways of working as the primary obstacle to introducing lean management principles, followed by lack of implementation know-how and middle management resistance. Backsliding dropped to sixth place in this year’s survey.

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