Lean
Database: An Interdisciplinary Perspective Combining Lean Thinking and
Technology
Jamil Razmak1, Samir Al-Janabi2, Faten Kharbat3, and Charles Bélanger4
1College of Business, Al Ain University, UAE
2Department of
Computing and Software, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
3College of Engineering, Al Ain University, UAE
4Faculty of
Management, Laurentian University, Canada
Abstract: The
continuous improvement approach is key to achieve a sustainable competitive
advantage for organizations in their business processes. Nowadays,
organizational business processes are seen through an automated function under
the umbrella of organizational information systems. The huge amount of
automated business processes produces data embedded with a part of messy data
that could provide corrupt data. This study uses a lean thinking concept
integrated with the data cleaning approach to reduce the waste of data
according to business requirements and to enhance continuous improvement as
part of a data defect reduction strategy. A new approach of improving and
cleaning data waste is proposed by combining data cleaning algorithm and lean thinking
concepts. After testing the quality and scalability of the algorithm, along
with the evaluation of a corrupt dataset, the results showed improvement in the
corrupt dataset reduction, leading to higher organizational performance in
business processes. This integration can help researchers and technologists to
fully understand and benefit from interdisciplinary capabilities while building
bridges between different fields.
Keywords: Lean
database, interdisciplinary, lean thinking, data quality, data cleaning.
Received March 3, 2020; accepted July 14,
2020
