Structuring Lean Thinking in the Radio Access Network Area

Abstract: Customer’ demands, higher quality, faster and safer deliveries are some reasons for unexpected changes in the organizations. It has incremented complexity and cost. Lean production is known as a methodology to make improvements in manufacturing areas such as mentioned above and it is focused on the process of a product. But, Lean Thinking is a management strategy to make improvements in the process of a product or service and it is based on five principles. It allows having the process close to the customer eliminates tasks that do not add value and produces with low costs and high quality. However, there are some concepts ambiguous to be applied effectively to the Radio Access Network area in wireless telecom industry as a service company. Radio Access Network area transmits Radio frequency (RF) signals from the Radio Base Station (RBS) to the user equipment (UE) or mobile phone and is an area to present dynamic changes by high technology innovation. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify improvements through for the Radio Access Network area. This thesis was structured to know how the five Lean principles and Lean tools can be used in the Radio Access Network area and the benefits that it could have. The study was realized through a qualitative research and five semi-structured interviews. A manager, team leaders and engineers of wireless telecom industry vendor and operators were the participants for this study. The results of major impact for Lean principles and Lean tools were VSM and Flow principles and Waste as Lean tool found for the Radio Access Network area. Project definition, resource planning and VOC were some improvements revealed for VSM principle. Furthermore, faster and optimal tools, training for engineers, knowledge in software and employee empowerment were some improvements found for Flow principle. Waste Lean tool showed some improvements found on customer’s focus, clear communication and waiting time reduction. Cross functional teams were other aspects that provided quality performance in the projects. This study seemingly is a good start for making decisions and for the high technology innovation and dynamic changes for telecom service companies.