Effects of Lean Management Practices on Competitiveness of Grain Milling Firms in Uasin Gishu County-Kenya

Abstract

Lean management practice has now become a critical and regular practice to achieve organizational competitiveness. Many companies such as manufacturing industry have been implementing the lean approach for many years however; there are still organizations that have a long way to go to become leaner. In this regard the grain milling industry in Kenya suffers non-competitiveness owing to problem of broad production which has remained in place as advanced technology takes its roots in Africa. Thus, the general objective of the study was to find out the effects of lean management practices on competitiveness of grain milling firms in Uasin Gishu County-Kenya. The study investigated the effects of total production maintenance practices, total flow management practices on competitiveness. This study adopted descriptive survey research design with a target population 686 employees from the four grain mailing companies in Uasin Gishu County. The sample size was 292 respondents to take care of non-response rate. Data was analyzed by use of descriptive and inferential techniques using SPSS version 25 and presented using tables. From the findings the value of adjusted R squared is 0.465 an indication that there was a variation of 46.5% on the competitiveness in grain milling firms in Uasin Gishu county due to total production maintenance (TPM) and total flow management (TFM) at 95% confidence interval. Thus all the lean management practices under study have a significant effect on competitiveness as supported by both Porters generic theory and resource based view. This implies that the strategic bundling of these lean management practices remains a strategic pillar for competitiveness. There is need for the grain milling industry to strategically invest their resources to lean management practices to set them apart from their competitors.