IS LEAN A WASTE OF TIME? – A case study of Kjell&Company and the implementation of lean into their central warehouse

Abstract

Companies constantly strive towards increasing their efficiency by improving the daily operations in order to strengthen their competitive advantage in the market. The concept of lean thinking has presented tools to achieve higher efficiency by the elimination of waste, i.e. the reduction of non-value-added activities for the end-customer. Although the concept is well-established in the manufacturing sector, it is not as developed in other sectors, such as warehousing. A common denominator for all sectors is the difficulty that lies within the initiation process. The purpose of this study is to investigate a company’s initiation process during a lean implementation into their central warehouse – what tools to adopt, how to include the employees, and how to measure the changes made – in order to become more efficient and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. An explanatory single case study, under the interpretivist paradigm with a deductive approach, has been conducted with help of the Swedish electronics peripherals company Kjell&Company. The data collection was gathered in Malmö with the help of interviews, observations and internal documents from the company. The study is limited to cover the lean implementation within the company’s logistics department only. The key findings of the study show that 5S, VSM and the PDCA cycle are suitable tools, employees should be included on a bottom-up approach basis since lean requires its time and dedication, and the choices of suitable hard and soft KPIs should be connected to the 5 key principles of lean thinking and the lean strategy.