Impact of lean implementation on employees’ job satisfaction in the ABC Apparel manufacturing firm

Abstract

For almost all organizations, employees are the vital resource and they are representing an important asset within the business. The main concern of Human resource management is to improve the potential of employees so that they can get maximum job satisfaction from their work and give their best efforts to the organization. Job satisfaction represents one of the foremost areas facing current managers when it comes to managing their employees. In the current context of Sri Lankan apparel industry, it can be seen that the high labor turnover rate in relation to the labor recruitments. The lean implementation of the apparel industry has been drastically changing the industrial environment and the way a worker perform his job role. As a solution to the labor turnover it is necessary to identify the impact of lean implementation on the employee satisfaction. ABC apparel manufacturing firm is a one of the apparel manufacturing firms which has implemented lean concepts such as Empowerment, Standardization, Quality Management, Problem Solving Demand, Effort-Reward Fairness, Team Working Culture and Job Rotation. Based on the literature review and preliminary investigation, hypothesis were developed in order to identify the relationship between the lean implementation and job satisfaction. Therefore the primary data for this research were collected through the survey conducted in the ABC Company. The survey was conducted over 60 sample units and the sample was selected using the simple random sampling technique. The collected data were analyzed using the statistical tool namely descriptive statistics, frequencies, correlation and linear regression. Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that there is a moderate positive relationship between the lean practices and the job satisfaction in the ABC apparel manufacturing firm