Influence of Lean Inventory Management Techniques on Performance of Manufacturing Firms in Nairobi City County Kenya

Abstract

Procurement managers are bound to embrace the essence of adopting lean production which is a business initiative to reduce waste in manufacture production. To this extent therefore, this initiative leverage companies to achieve long term competitive advantages by putting in place the proper production systems and technologies particularly with regard to product quality, shortening product design time, the reducing of wastage improving end customer satisfaction and inventory management. The study was guided by the following objectives, the material requirement planning, the just in time technique, Analysis based costing and vendor managed inventory. The research objectives and research questions set out and the scope of study limited to manufacturing firms in Nairobi County, Kenya. The research used descriptive research design. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics where regression analysis was used to establish the effect of independent variables on the dependent variable. The population was 455 respondents drawn from manufacturing firms in Nairobi County with a sample size population of 213. The data was analyzed with SPSS version 23. The study findings showed that the four variables had a significant influence on firm performance. The study recommended that a similar research should be conducted with an aim at investigating the effects of inventory management techniques on firms' performance with other variables or of other firms in other sectors, including the service industry in the Kenyan market. The study indicated that there had been limited amount of research on effects of lean inventory management techniques on firms' performance of manufacturing firms in Kenya. Thus, the findings of this study served as a basis for future studies on lean inventory management. The lean inventory management techniques and firm performance of manufacturing firms had not been widely studied which presented gaps in African and Kenyan contexts.