How lean are the smaller ones? : Adoption of lean practices and impact measurement in medium-sized manufacturing firms in Finland

Abstract

Traditionally, Lean philosophy can be summarized as “doing more with less”. Thus, having well planned and efficient operations can give manufacturing companies a competitive edge through minimizing waste and increasing quality and customer value. The whole potential of Lean manufacturing can be utilized if the ideas are comprehensively incorporated within the organization. This requires resources, which smaller-scale firms might not have available. This study aims to investigate how extensively lean is adopted across these smaller manufacturing organizations in Finland. First, background for the study is provided to give insight to lean philosophy as well as justifications for companies to measure impacts and performance. Next, the empirical part of the paper investigates the adoption of lean tools and measurement of their impact in Finnish production firms. The research limits to the study of active firms that have their own manufacturing operations and are based in Finland. In addition, they have operating turnover over 1 million, but under 10 million euros and employ 15-150 people. The findings suggest that lean philosophy is not highly adopted across smaller scale manufacturing firms in Finland. Additionally, majority of the lean users are flying blind and not measuring the progression of the desired impacts. However, one major limitation of this study is its small sample size, thus the results are merely directive.