The Impact of Lean Management on Business Level Performance and Competitiveness

Abstract

In this paper we describe a model that investigates the impact of lean management on business competitiveness. We hypothesize that business competitiveness depends on organizational competences (including both the static level of operational capability and the dynamic capabilities of improving and adapting to changing internal and external conditions) and business performance. The lean literature provides an unbalanced picture of the elements of business competitiveness: while several researches discuss the impact of lean on static operational measures, there are much less studies about the relationship between lean and 1) organizational changes and responsiveness, and between lean and 2) business performance. In the empirical part of our paper we focus on the latter issues using both case studies and questionnaires. With our case based research (using two original cases and relying on several ECCH cases) we can clearly highlight how lean affects, through employees, organizational responsiveness and how it leads towards higher business competitiveness. Our analysis is unique in the sense that we could relate the casebased analysis to the perspective of employees, since in our original cases several employees (83 and 97) filled in a questionnaire that showed the impact of lean tools and methods on them, as well as their opinion about the improvements both at operational and business levels.