The Influence of lean six sigma on operational performance of juice manufacturing firms in Nairobi metropolitan area
Date
2022-08
Authors
Oyottoh, Nicholas Ochieng’
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
Organizations are operating in quite a volatile environment driven by stiff competition, customers with low brand loyalty and continuously increasing input prices while consumers are not willing to take a price increment from any supplier. Most organizations are therefore looking for systems, strategies and process that can make them compete in the market place. One of the ways organizations strive to address competitive challenge and improve performance is rolling out continuous improvement practices such as Six Sigma, and Lean. The key point of concern is whether the implementation of lean six sigma results in any improvement in performance. There are gaps in literature as the results are quite varied where some organizations see benefits while others see no benefits and the extreme end of the benefits continuum some organizations see negative impact on their performance after implementing the lean six sigma. In the literature, there was also varied geographical spread in the study with literature showing a bias towards the studies being done in developed world. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of Lean Six Sigma on operational performance of Juices manufacturing firms in Nairobi metropolitan area. This specifically involved establishing the influence of Coordination, TPM, Employee Involvement and Statistical Process Control on operational performance of Juice manufacturing firms in Nairobi Metropolitan area. This study was anchored on two theories namely dynamic capability theory and knowledge based theory. The study adopted positivism research with a descriptive research design. The primary data was collected by administration of semi-structured questionnaire targeting 78 respondents from the 13 juice manufacturing firm in the Nairobi Metropolitan area. The study made use of MS Excel as well as R as tools to analyze the primary data collected. The descriptive statistics and correlation analysis on the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables showed that the four predictor variables (Coordination, Employee involvement, Total productive maintenance, and Statistical process control) had statistical significant influence on the operational performance. The limitations of the study included the cross-sectional approach of research design and thus, the results are to be interpreted within such period. Therefore, future studies could consider longitudinal studies and results compared, other limitations included the regional focus of Nairobi Metropolitan areas as well as the industry of focus which was the juice firms within the Nairobi metropolitan area.
Description
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration at Strathmore University