https://www.mdu.se/

As the speed of change is increasing, it’s of great importance that manufacturing companies strive to achieve not only incremental improvements, but also radical improvements within their production systems. Thus, more research has to be focused on how to realize radical improvement. In accordance, the objective of the licentiate thesis is to, through theoretical and empirical work, increase the understanding about radical improvement in production and identify what elements need to be considered when designing support on how to implement radical improvement in industrial production. Throughout the research process these issues has been addressed through theoretical and empirical studies. Three studies have been conducted in total, of which two are mainly of theoretical character and one of empirical character. Besides, a state-of-the-art theoretical review has been carried out as well, further framing the findings.

The research results imply that radical improvement in production is a teamwork process that embraces the facilitation of creativity and innovation. The research further implies that there are a number of issues to consider when creating industry-applicable support on how to realize radical improvement in industrial production. For instance, what level of innovation is striven for must be decided, creativity must be facilitated throughout, the opposing cultures of incremental and radical innovation must be managed, and there is a need to apply a holistic perspective, thus embracing not only productivity results but organizational learning as well.

As further work, creating industry-applicable support on how to realize radical improvement in industrial production is advocated, focusing not only on meeting the issues addressed above, but also how to make the support industry-applicable.

Lean Production is one of the most generally accepted concepts for increasing operational effectiveness. However, its implementation is still challenging for many companies as it implies not only changes of technical systems and management systems but also changes in attitudes and culture. Generalizable implementation steps have still not yet emerged and there are many ways to implement Lean Production. A Lean Production implementation is a never ending process since it is always possible to become leaner. Thus, the implementation of Lean Production is a long-term commitment for a company in order to reach success.

There is a need for research on how to develop and integrate improvement work in order to establish a successful implementation of Lean Production. Accordingly, the overall purpose of the research presented in this thesis is to contribute to an increased understanding of how to successfully implement Lean Production. Moreover, the objective is to develop a supportive framework for a successful Lean Production implementation and to describe this in a general process for the implementation of improvement work.

Through literature reviews and three research studies, a supportive framework for the successful implementation of improvement work has been developed. The first study is an explanatory literature and interview study to build a concept model of improvement work. The second study is an exploratory embedded single case study that was conducted to validate the model. Finally, the third study is an exploratory multiple holistic case study that investigated enablers for continuous improvement after a radical implementation of Lean Production.

The resulting supportive framework consists of important actions to consider during the different stages of a process for the implementation of improvement work. In the first stage after a radical implementation phase, actions important to sustain change and enable continuous improvement include for example a focus on good leadership on shop floor and efforts in the area of control and follow-up of results in production teams.

To develop continuous improvement several actions are defined, like the importance of understanding the context of improvement work including important relations to operations and to develop the production strategy with objectives to align the improvement work.

To reach long term success it is important to integrate continuous improvement into operations and important actions for this stage are for example to update the Operational Management System on the company-specific-production-system framework’s processes continuously, which includes visualisation of the overall improvement work process.