COVID-19 BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT– LEAN MANAGEMENT AS COPING MECHANISM

Abstract

The corona pandemic has had extreme effects on business worldwide. In Uganda, like elsewhere,
the government ordered a lockdown that lasted nearly six months in 2020 and a second one
through mid-year 2021. These adversely affected business enterprises as they closed abruptly.
When the lockdown of 2020 was lifted for business enterprises, many organizations started
counting the losses and the continuing effects. Critical management responses included working
from home; working in shifts, laying off workers, suspending contracts, redundancy leave
among others. Several organizations have had to restructure to fit into what has been hyped as
the new normal. An earlier study in Uganda informs this paper that lean management is one of
the models that business enterprises could adopt for survival in the Covid-19 era. Even before
the corona pandemic, some organizations had adopted lean management for cost cutting,
effectiveness and maximizing productivity. This has now become a necessity rather than a choice
as lockdowns led to immense operational difficulties. Challenges related to lean management in
steering through the Covid-19 adverse effects include lapses in lean awareness, non-lean
behavior, inadequate staff training and skills outlay, inexistence of guiding polices and
information inaccuracies. We recommend that organizations should adopt zero time-based
models of production, improve service delivery, constant information exchange and adopting
new technologies.
Key words: Covid-19, Lean management, Business Resilience, Lockdown, Uganda, Post covid