Lean enterprise and supply chain performance of pharmaceutical companies in Kenya

Abstract

In the dynamic changing business environment, both small and large firms are driven to minimize costs of their operation and maximize profits in the local and global markets. Lean supply chain management practices are becoming the key drivers of competitive firms. Lean practices enable firms to achieve their long term goals and boost productivity annually, increase on-time delivery to nearly reduce floor space, cut defects, decrease inventory, improve quality, reduce costs, increase capacity, sales, profits, increase customer and employee satisfaction. A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste. The objectives of the study were; to determine the extent of lean strategy implementation in pharmaceutical companies in Kenya, to determine the impact of lean on performance of pharmaceutical companies in Kenya and to determine the challenges in the implementation of lean strategies by pharmaceutical companies in Kenya. Descriptive statistics methodology of data analysis was used and frequency distributions, percentages frequency tables were used to summarize and relate variables in the study. The study established that quite a number of lean supply chain management practices were applied by pharmaceutical companies but to a low extent. It was also confirmed that Global Benchmarking, Electronic inventory management, TQM practices, ICT integration in the supply chain, Innovation and creativity, Satisfactory customer services, Zero waste tolerance, JIT delivery services explain 87.1% of the variation in Performance of Pharmaceutical companies in Kenya. Therefore, this study recommends institutionalization of lean enterprise culture among employees of the organization. Top level managers should allocate adequate financial resources to empower employees on lean practices based on training.