Key aspects of the enterprise readiness to the introduction of lean production

Nowadays, lean production is becoming an increasingly popular technology for enterprise management. A significant number of scientific publications and applied research are devoted to this topic. The experience of introducing the tools of lean production is widely covered in the media, and a large number of thematic forums are organised. At the same time, it is shown in practice that not all the introduction attempts are successful. The purpose of this article is to develop an algorithm for preparing an enterprise to the process of introduction of lean production by analyzing and systematizing the key preventing barriers. The practical basis of the research has become the experience of introduction of lean production in more than 2 thousand commercial enterprises of various branches of industries, with a revenue volume from 100 million to 25 billion and an average headcount from 10 to 10000 people. In the course of the study, based on the spatial approach, a hypothesis about the determining influence of the factors of the mental field on the successful introduction of lean production has been formulated and confirmed, which allowed to develop an effective algorithm which differs from the existing ones by its applied nature.