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Due to growing global competition, especially in the last decade, the United
States wood and wood-based industries have suffered significant market
share losses. The wood industry in Germany is facing similar challenges.
To stay competitive in an increasingly global marketplace, many wood
manufacturers are adopting new management/manufacturing approaches.
Lean manufacturing is a widely accepted and adopted approach across
industries. Lean thinking captures the holistic management approach
behind the lean manufacturing terminology. The ultimate goal of a lean
organization is to create a smooth, high quality organization that is able to
produce finished products at the rate of customer demand in the quality
looked-for with slight or no waste. This study documents cases of lean
implementation in the United States and German secondary wood products
industries. Two “lean leader” companies from each country were studied to
identify the successes, failures, and challenges to implementation.
Qualitative and quantitative measures were used to document and compare
the individual case studies. An embedded multiple-case design approach
was applied.
Findings of the study, and previous work suggested, that lean
thinking can make companies in the secondary wood products industry
more profitable. The implementation of lean thinking resulted in more
efficient and cost effective manufacturing. Particularly, case companies
were able to reduce defects, inventory, and lead time. The study also
showed, that if lean thinking was applied to marketing processes, benefits
especially in the areas of customer service, new product development, and
customer satisfaction were created. The positive results of lean thinking
are not limited to those mentioned above, but these were the most common
benefits. Case companies were able to realize many other positive effects
by implementing lean practices and principles.
The key challenges case companies faced during lean
implementation were communication issues. All case companies saw it as
critical to communicate the new vision and values to all employees. It was
seen as extremely important to have everybody understand and accept
what lean thinking means and what benefits it can bring to an organization.
At the same time this was the main challenge all case companies had to
overcome. |
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