Case company
The company employs about 2000 blue- and whitecollar
workers in total, and the annual revenue is a little
more than
D
250 million. The company is headquartered
in Scandinavia, and its main production site, the site of our
investigation, is situated just next to the HQ.
The company produces a variety of small electronic
equipment for business customers around the world. It is
a family-owned company that has expanded to its current
size since the present CEO took over in the 1970s.
In 2003, several Lean tools, such as JIT, Kanban, 5S, Lean
office, Kaizen, etc. were implemented, and the company
has been dedicated to the Lean philosophy ever since. The
company also changed its organizational structure and production
layout at this point in time. The new structure
involved a product line for each product group, very much
like value streams, although all product groups still have
some functions in common, e.g., raw materials inventory,
and packaging. Nevertheless, the vast majority of activities
and resources are located within each value stream, as recommended
in the Lean approach (Maskell and Baggaley,
2004). Since 2003, the company has won several national
awards for its substantial Lean program, and it is recognized
by Lean experts in its country to be at the frontier of
Lean implementation.