Exploring the impact of lean design and lean supply chain management on an organization’s innovation capability.

Abstract

This thesis analyzes and discusses how implementing lean design and lean supply chain management affect an organization’s innovation capabilities. Since lean concepts focus on low risk, short-term gradual improvement of existing processes and products with an emphasis on eliminating any and all wastes in the system, applying lean to an organization often implies difficulties in promoting innovations that involve high risks and dramatic changes. Little is known about how lean design and lean supply chain management concepts might affect an organization’s innovation capability and its responsiveness to react quickly to changes brought by radical innovations. These relationships were investigated and analyzed based on findings from two online surveys. Seventy-six and seventy-seven respondents were acquired from the two surveys, respectively. Results suggest that the stressed importance of standardization in lean design has a negative effect on an organization’s radical and architectural innovation capability. It is also shown that disruptive innovation capability will be negatively influenced by value analysis in lean design, especially in terms of how an organization ranks product attributes and allocates resources based on customer requirements. For the impact on an organization’s responsiveness to radical innovations, the findings suggest no impact from minimizing buffers in a lean supply chain but a positive impact from increasing supplier commitment and involvement levels.