Lean principles and continuous improvement strategies such as six sigma, Value Stream Mapping, standard work and 5S can be used as major tools to reduce non-value adding activities and to optimise the overall performance in the supply chain of an organisation. Although the concept originated in manufacturing industry (Toyota), its basics can also be successfully applied to service industry, and one such promising industry is warehousing. Warehousing plays a crucial role in supply chain management in an organisation, where the activity, most of the time, involves only in managing the movement of goods efficiently according to customer requirements, but not in owning the good. Thus handling the goods movement efficiently leads to good profit. Lean application in a warehouse can improve its visibility, material flow, work organisation and standardisation of processes. Here, according to the problem area and counteraction of the company, this study turns to the problems of improvement of efficiency and value adding through the implementation of lean principles in the warehouse [1]. The study focused first on identifying the possibility of applying Lean Concept into warehouse operation. Secondly, it aimed to develop a methodology to identify Non-Value Adding Activities (NVAAs) in the system using Lean tools and then to determine suitable Lean tools to mitigate or remove those NVAAs from the system, hence enhancing the performance of the warehouse operation. Due to the time and finance constraints, research was conducted in a way which included the features of the case study approach.

Hewage, U. (2016). Methodology to enhance warehouse performances using lean concepts [Extended Abstract]. In T.L. Gunaruwan (Ed.), Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Research for Transport and Logistics Industry 2016 (pp. 181-184). Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics. https://slstl.lk/r4tli-2016/