Work efficiency improvement in Sabah industry through lean tools implementation

This paper aims to explain the general perspective of Sabah’s industrial company with respect to changes in work efficiency through introducing lean tools. The objective of this paper is to determine the factors correlation of environment, job performance and manager-employee relationship with work efficiency among companies in Sabah. The method used for this study is a quantitative method through survey-based questionnaire. This method will make it easy to reach companies in different areas and industries. The questionnaire was distributed through email and WhatsApp application to 50 companies. A total of 25 responses were returned from 50 companies resulting in 50% of valid response rate. Data were analysed using SPSS software package. Data analysis was done using Cronbach’s Alpha to measure reliability for Likert scale questions, descriptive statistics tool was used to evaluate the mean between dependent variables and independent variables and Pearson correlation analysis was used for linear regression and path analysis. The findings indicated 68% out of 100% respondents have awareness on lean tools. However, only 64% of the companies have implement lean tools technique. It can be inferred from the collected data that 5S and Kaizen are best used lean tools among companies in Sabah. Respondents mostly agree that lean tools benefit work efficiency in terms of positive impact on productivity, reduce and eliminate waste, reduce lead time, reduction of inventory to increase productivity and improves safety.