Abstract:The acceptance of lean philosophy in the company means not only respecting the lean principles in the manufacturing but in all the processes that are performed inside the company. All processes in the company that are a potential places for making losses and waste and thus require the application of lean principles. Among others, warehouse and warehouse operations, as a centre of costs and waste, must be supported through the implementation of lean philosophy in the company by respecting lean principles. The implementation of lean principles in the warehouse is a certain step of improvement warehouse process and performance, but also of the whole company. In that sense, the paper presents the analysis of the warehousing process and its performances before and after implementation of the lean tools in a selected Serbian company as a practical example. In addition, research shows which parts of warehousing need to be improved, in analysed company, as well as correlation between the individual parts of warehousing, according to employees' opinion from next sectors: purchasing, production and logistics.

Small and medium sized-enterprises (SMEs) are often seen as a sector important for job creation. About 2/3 of the overall employment is provided by this sector, both in the EU and in the Republic of Serbia. There is evidence that SMEs are responsible for the most part of the net employment growth. The SMEs sector in Serbia is identified as sector which can absorb a part of the unemployment generated by the large scale enterprises’ (LSEs) restructuring and privatization. Today, the unemployment rate in Serbia is high above the average unemployment rate in the EU. The question is whether the SMEs sector can absorb that unemployment, or is this sector more influenced by the crisis, relative to the LSEs. The aim of this paper is to examine the employment contribution of the SMEs in the Republic of Serbia. Furthermore, the paper will deal with the impact of the crisis on the SMEs’ employment, efficiency and their investment activities. The problems that are identified by SMEs, and that lead to rising unemployment in this sector over the past few years will be considered and analyzed.

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The paper presents results of an empirical study of the importance of qualitative and quantitative dimensions of business success for female entrepreneurs in the Republic of Serbia. There is empirical evidence that qualitative components, such as customer and employee satisfaction, relations with stakeholders, and family-work balance are more important to Serbian female entrepreneurs. Quantitative components (profit and employment growth, personal wealth, and other personal goals), although lower ranked, are also an important aspect of business success. These results also confirm that female entrepreneurs in Serbia have a diverse perception of business success.

The aim of this paper is to examine the importance of different aspects of business success for different age and educational groups of female entrepreneurs in the Republic of Serbia. An empirical study was conducted on a sample of 40 female entrepreneurs from several urban areas in the Republic of Serbia. The data are analysed by conducting the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and one-way Multivariate Analysis of Variances (MANOVA). Results show that all different aspects of business success that were examined can be grouped around two main dimensions - qualitative and quantitative one. Although certain differences in the importance of these dimensions between female entrepreneurs of different age and education were found, they were not statistically important. However, this research can be seen as a pilot study, so further research, which would possibly presuppose a realization of a larger sample, can be carried out starting from the defined conceptual and methodological framework.