Lean practices and supply chain performance among automotive assembling firms in Kenya

Abstract

Many organizations in the automotive industry have been found to struggle in the new customer driven and globally competitive markets. This has been attributed to the increasing competition in the automotive industry and recent global economic slowdown. One of the ways in which firms have employed to reverse the trend is to employ the lean manufacturing. The study was to establish the relationship between lean assembling practices and supply chain performance amongst automotive firms in Kenya. This study sought to achieve two objectives; firstly to document the extent to which Lean Assembling practices have been adopted by motor vehicle assemblers listed at the Kenya Motor Industry Association (KMIA) and secondly to determine the effects of Lean Assembling practices on the Supply Chain performance of motor vehicle assembling firms in Kenya. The study adopted a cross sectional study exploring the lean assembling practices amongst automotive firms in Kenya. The target population was all the motor vehicle assembling firms in Kenya registered with the Kenya Motor Industry Association (KMIA, 2015) whereby there are ten in total. The research use both primary and secondary sources of data. The research findings were that reduced inventory, reduced manufacturing costs, waste reduction and short set up time were found to be the aspects of just-in-time that were considered significant to supply chain performance. Further, the study found out that reduced cost of information processing and transmission were found to be moderately significant to influencing the performance of the automobile firms. These findings should help in encouraging the widespread adoption of lean assembling practices in Kenya considering that Supply Chain is an ever-growing field. Further study should be carried out to establish the impact of information sharing on the Supply Chain Performance of lean assembling firms