Lean Working Environments – An Empirical Study of 24 Companies Implementing Lean

This paper studies the perceived effects on the working conditions in 24 medium sized manufacturing companies, approximately 1.5 year into their implementation of Lean. This is studied quantitatively based on four stakeholders’ perceptions (the workers, the managers, the production supervisors and the white-collar workers), based on three factors; changes in the working environment, work with safety for the personnel and level of stress. The results indicate that the physical work environments have improved and the workers and production supervisors report a slight increase in stress. Lastly, all groups report an increase in the work with safety for the personnel.