Revolutionizing Workforce Management: The Lean Approach

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Recommended: Organizational culture influences on production

1) Changing the system, not the people
One noticeable thing about the lean approach to work force management was the respect and trust invested in the work force as well as the system. The workers were earlier seen as negative necessities of the system rather than contributing members and understandably the workers felt that since they were going to be with the firm for a long time period, things should be done their way.
The new system provided them liberty in the form of demanding ideas from them. They were encouraged to question established systems, contribute with ideas and voice their problems. Their respect was earned further when the problems they voiced were eliminated on priority and they were further encouraged (even awarded) to find new methods of improvement. This of course helped the production process to consistently eliminate problems and make the environment more comfortable for the work force.
2) Breaking Monotony
Since Lean is a continuous improvement approach, a critical difference between the 2 systems was that the Lean approach instilled smaller teams of workers instead of a larger bunch. Even with smaller team, to ensure that there is not a sense of creeping boredom, the members were to switch jobs. This ensured that a person was …show more content…

It seems almost as if the cars themselves are not mere statistics on a paper but instead the workers take great pride in identifying themselves in each of them. This speaks volumes about the respect invested into their work, which makes them accept and own responsibility of a product from the many numbers that they produced. The motivation to continuously improve their surroundings as well as the process ensures that there is zero error in their products which also leads to a lot of care invested into their work. Also a result of this positive motivation was observed in the decrease of

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