Digital Lean Disturbance Management

Sammanfattning: As a realization of visualization and simplification principles in lean, lean methods typically employ physical tools. However, being physical is both strength and weakness of lean tools. Being physical is a strength, because physical lean tools are easy to implement, easy to learn and easy to use. On the other hand, being physical is a weakness, because physical tools do not have the capability to store the information registered on them long term; which causes information waste. Eliminating waste is another important principle of Lean, which this thesis aims to add to the physical lean tools. The information written on these tools can be used to create a knowledge base as a means of reducing the aforementioned information waste. The knowledge base then can be used to increase decision making capacity through various statistical data analyses. This thesis aims to reduce the knowledge waste in Lean methods that use physical visualization tools by digitalizing them and creating a database of the entries to be re-used. To reach the aim, a case company and a Lean method (i.e., pulse disturbance management) was chosen to carry out the research. The work to reach the aim is guided by research questions that divide the work into three parts: (1) defining the barriers (2) mitigating the barriers (3) validation. In total seven barriers were defined. The barriers were mitigated. As a result, the prescribed lean digital disturbance management system has been deployed to the case company and disturbances has been captured by the employees over three years. The collected data has been analyzed for validation.