Effektivare informationsflöden med Lean information management

Sammanfattning: Information management is important for organizations since it constitutes the foundation for leading and organizing companies. Sharing information has for a long time been considered as a critical activity in supply chains. This study is based on the Lean information management framework which are founded by the principles of Lean and continuous improvements in the information management context. Previous studies have examined whether the principles of Lean can be applied in the area of information management. The framework has been developed from these studies. Only a few studies have applied the framework of lean information management.   The purpose of this study is to apply the framework of Lean information management and examine critical factors in information management which affects the efficiency in a company’s internal processes. A case study were conducted at SCA Östrand where the process of purchasing certified wood are studied. Value stream mapping are chosen as a tool to visualize the current state of the process. Failure mode and effect analysis, FMEA, are applied to prioritize failure modes in the process. When developing the future state map the failure modes are taken into account.    The result shows that waiting, transport and motion are main categories of waste that appear in the purchase process of the case company. Increasing the availability of documents and reducing lead time caused by exchange of information via mail are factors to premium the efficiency of the process. This result shows contradictions where other types of waste, such as defects, instead can occur when documents are available for more people.  For future research it’s interesting to examine the information flow in different organizations to see how different changes premium the efficiency. Studying other processes in addition to purchase can give rich insights to this area of knowledge. From a business point of view it can be interesting to examine how changes in information flow affects monetary values. This is another aspect that can develop the research area. Previous research has not mentioned contradictions in Lean information management. To further expand the area of research, contradictions in Lean information management would be interesting to examine.