How to Achieve Lean by Creating Communication Flow and Keep the Capabilities from Lean Startup

Abstract: Lean principles are spreading from the manufacturing industry to public sectors and the service industry. Many attempts at implementing lean have failed. The aim of this thesis is to find methods to implement lean in the service industry. Analysis of the correlation between principles in lean production proved that it can be hard to implement lean principles one by one to achieve a lean company. Also, the company's culture is examined as a factor that can inhibit lean principles. Reviewing experiments of implementing lean tools at Telavox, it was apparent that some fundamental principles, named meta principles, were needed to implement lean. A model, with two parts, was created based on what was learned from the experiments. The first is a division named the sandbox which functions by achieving or maintaining the capabilities of a startup company to achieve a higher degree of internal disruptive innovation. The other is a communication tool called communication flow kanban which is designed to support lean principles. It is stated that if a company uses the communication tool to make decisions and as a framework for communication, the company will be more lean. The communication flow kanban also reduces wastes and fosters a higher degree of incremental innovation.