SONAE MC Case Study: Lean Implementation and Overcoming Challenges

This case study solution examines the implementation of lean principles at SONAE MC, a retail company. It discusses the challenges faced during implementation, including high costs, increased labor expenses, and employee opposition. The solution details SONAE MC's phased approach to lean implementation, which includes focusing on store processes, store operations, and the application of lean tools. The case study also highlights the company's efforts to maintain consistency in implementation and improve internal logistics. The analysis refers to external sources to support its arguments and provides a comprehensive overview of the complexities involved in adopting lean principles in a dynamic retail environment. Desklib provides students access to similar solved assignments to aid in their studies.

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Question 2
Lean Principles
Lean Management is an approach for a growing organisation that supports the concepts of
continuous improving, work systematically in order to achieve the objectives. Lean
management have their five key principles and these are called Lean principles. Learn
principles are value, value stream, flow, pull and perfection (Crawford, 2016).
The main purpose of following the lean principle is to eliminate the waste from any part of
the procedure. It is observed that the every stage of procedure contains the some component
of waste that is why; it is essential to adopt the lean principles to reduce it. It has been seen
that the implementation of lean principles is a challenge for the every organisation due to
various reasons and these are below:
Expensive
The implementation of principles consumes high cost in order to acquire the right
equipment’s and tools. It is also essential for the company to covered the cost before begin
the benefits of lean.
More outlays for labour
The labour cost of the company is increases by putting the process of improvement into the
place. It is difficult for the company to maintain the high labour cost with the other cost.
Opposition
It is biggest challenge for employees as well because learning the new things and implement
this into a real life is difficult. Employees take time to learn the new things especially in the
term of improvements.

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These three are the main challenges that an organisation has to face during the process of
implementation of principles. Due to these challenges and issues, lean principle is considered
as the challenging project.
Implementation of Lean Principles
In the case of SONAE MC, it is difficult to implement the lean principles in retail due to
dynamic and turbulent work environment. The first step of the company towards the lean
principles is divided into three areas such as three store processes, three areas of the store
operations and the last the and applying the lean tools. This step helps to explore the
creativity and due to which the customer satisfaction is increases.
The second phase of adopting the Lean principle is the consolidation and expansion. The
company expand the business by providing the multiple numbers of products to the stores.
The main purpose of this is to increases the visibility in the all areas of stores.
The third phase of implementing the lean principle is formulation and consistency. In the year
2009-2010, the company conduct the audit to assess the level of lean implementation
(SONAE MC., 2018). After the auditing, it decided to maintain the consistency in
implementation of plan rather than adopting the lean tools.
The fourth phase is internal logistics and the main aim of this stage is to maintain 1st level and
start making inroads with level 2. In this stage, the company develop three internal logistics
project such as layout, redefinition, improving flow and logistics trains. These internal
logistics are implemented in all current 170 stores (SONAE MC., 2018). The main aim is to
improve the services and performance by reducing the wastage.

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References
Crawford, M. (2016) 5 Lean Principles Every Engineer Should Know. [online] Available
from: https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-design/5-lean-
principles-every-should-know [Accessed 18/4/19].
SONAE MC. (2018) When lean comes to service. [online] Available from:
file:///C:/Users/SYSTEM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/3309558_400303852_SonaeMCCaseStud
y-Whenleancomes.pdf [Accessed 18/4/19].