Summary:

Recent developments over the last 30 years have turned upside down the normal operations of post corporations worldwide. First, the general availability of the internet to the public from the 1990s and increased internet connectivity worldwide has resulted in customers switching traditional mail sending with more affordable and faster electronic mode of communication. Secondly, states have gradually opened post monopolies to competition through liberalization and deregulation politics. Thirdly, customers preferences have changed and with increased competition, it is exceedingly getting tough in satisfying and retaining customers. On the other hand, these new developments have brought up the opportunity for growth and renewal. For instance, while the mail side of post corporation business has irreversibly suffered because of specially digitalization, the parcel side of their business has been picking up because of increased e-commerce globally. As a response to this new status quo, post corporations are expected to carry out major structural reforms aimed at capitalizing on opportunities brought by these new developments while at the same time reducing negative side effects associated with them.
Going by recent trends(BAKSTAD, 2009a), some of the reforms carried out by post corporations include changing the way their businesses are managed. Some post corporations have for example turned to increasingly new popular modern management systems like the Japanese hailed lean management system to improve their performance and quality of their services. The lean management concept which can be traced back to the Toyota company of Japan uses the bottom-up approach to management. Unlike the conventional management systems where the manager was responsible for both diagnosing and prescribing solutions to emerging problems, in the lean system, the manager seeks help from his workers in both locating problems in the system and finding solutions to them.
This study aims at investigating Norway Post Ltd.`s lean management experiment. Specifically, the study aims at assessing Norway post employees lean concept skills with more focus on how much they know about the reason of implementing lean in their company, the lean concept tools and techniques used in their workstations and recognition of non-value adding activities and benefits of lean in their place of work. In addition, employees’ perception of the lean concept based on their experiences with lean will be tested. The general aim of this study is to increase awareness about how crucial in assessing employees lean skills and perception is in a step towards succeeding with lean and retaining it.
For the study, a questionnaire was designed to assess Norway post employees` level of lean awareness(skills) and perceptions in five post distribution centres in Oslo. Before the questionnaires were dispatched, an interview with frontline leaders and other key persons were conducted to get an updated informed perspective of their lean implementation status. Frontline leaders helped in pretesting and adjusting the items in the questionnaire before they were dispatched. Descriptive statistics and statistical packages R and Minitab were used to analyse the results.
Results from the study show that even though employees could identify non-value adding activities in their workplaces and could recognize improvements that were achieved because of lean, they didn’t know the tools and techniques that make lean work. However, the study also observed that they were differences between the distributions centres in terms of lean awareness. Further, the study revealed that employees` perception of lean as a concept and their working environment is good despite the existence of a few challenges connected to managerial styles, lack of enthusiasm for lean management by some leaders and challenges of doing lean in an era when the mail volume is constantly going down.
Based on this research, Norway post is recommended to re-evaluate their lean project with an aim of getting an in-depth understanding of the magnitude of the problems revealed in this study and possibly change something if new findings are consistent with this study. Further on, the thesis recommends an adjusted lean that reflects the unique challenges the company is facing.