Employees’ Health in the Process Industry: The Impact of Lean

Abstract: The effects of implementing Lean has been widely studied within the context of discrete manufacturing, where it originated, but much less so within the process industry. Within discrete manufacturing there are major benefits to implementing Lean with a focus on respect for people and human aspects, particularly on employee health and organisational culture, but does the same hold true in the process industry? The purpose of this thesis is to look into this question. In order to do so, a case company within the process industry, which was working with a consultant firm to implement Lean, was contacted. The primary method of gathering data was through semi-structured interviews, further backed by KPIs provided by the case company. The data from the case company has been analysed and compared with theories and ideas gathered from literature, and then discussed. The results indicated that there had not been enough time to see the full extent of benefits or issues on employee health or organisational culture in relation to implementing Lean, only minor effects could be observed. However, better contact between employees, increased motivation, but also increased stress could be seen. In order to gain a broader understanding of the human aspects within the context of process industry while implementing Lean, future research could look at more long-term effects, or the generalisability through a quantitative approach.