Employee Participation in the Implementation of Lean Production Systems

U. Dombrowski; T. Mielke; S. Schulze

Technische Universität Braunschweig
Institute for Production Management and Enterprise Research
Germany, 38106 Braunschweig, Tel. +49-531-3912714

Abstract
The rising competition in global economy causes new challenges for manufacturing enterprises. In recent years, many
enterprises try to improve their productivity and flexibility by implementing Lean Production Systems (LPS). Employees
are a main warrantor for the sustainable success of LPS and should participate in the implementation. The adequate
level of participation in the steps of the implementation process varies widely. In strategic questions, it is important to
convince employees with a structured information and communication. In contrast, during the rollout the employees
should participate actively. The paper describes the objectives of participation and the respective level of participation to
achieve them.

Keywords:
Participation; Employee Involvement; Lean Production Systems

1 INTRODUCTION the employees of the ideas of lean production, which requires a

A globalized world economy as well as an increased transparency
and comparability of products and services force companies to
continuously improve in order to stay competitive. Here, on the one
hand, the efficient use of the company's resources should be
considered, but also the effectiveness of processes in terms of
customer benefits has to be evaluated. A holistic approach that
should help to simultaneously minimize waste within the company
and align the processes to customer benefits is a Lean Production
System (LPS). [1] This term, coined in The Machine That Changed
the World, emblematizes the efforts of many American and
European manufacturing enterprises to copy and adapt the well-
known and successful Toyota Production System, which had been
developed by the founder of Toyota Industries, Sakichi Toyoda and
the engineer Taiichi Ohno. [2], [3]
An LPS is an enterprise-specific compilation of rules, standards,
methods and tools. [4] Even more important than these formal
elements, is an appropriate philosophy and culture to exploit the
potential of the individual elements. E.g., it is essential to establish
a no-blame culture in which the first occurrence of a fault is seen as
an opportunity to improve the processes. The search for a culprit is
not of relevance, instead it is of high importance to search, identify
and impede the root cause so that the error cannot occur a second
time.
Because of this necessary cultural transformation, the
implementation of an LPS is not a short-term rationalization project
with the goal to reach for example higher productivity or quality of
products. Rather, the transformation towards a lean enterprise
takes several years, but even later on continuous improvement and
constant change should be aspired. Critical factors for the
sustainable success of production systems are generally rather
people-related than technology-related. [5], [6], [7] People take a
significant role in the Toyota Production System, since workers who
execute the process every day, know the weaknesses and
improvement opportunities at firsthand. [2] Even in the operations
focused Factory Physics it is admitted, that employees play a major
role in an effective plant. [8] It is therefore necessary to convince
deep understanding of LPS and take them along on the way to a
lean enterprise. [6] Several significant authors emphasize the
importance of workers participation in lean production [3], [9], [10]
but rarely name specific approaches, how to do so. Some authors
show specific approaches concerning e.g. assembly and
disassembly [11] or job rotation [7] but do not specifically regard
LPS implementation.
2 IMPLEMENTATION OF LEAN PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
For manufacturing enterprises, it is a challenging journey to become
lean. They have to undertake a fundamental transformation of
principles, methods and tools as well as the enterprises culture and
philosophy. This extensive change in the enterprises organization
will affect each employee in every position. [6]
2.1 Implementation process
The implementation of an LPS is a challenging task. In order to
support the implementation, a systematic approach for a stepwise
implementation according to [12][9] will be introduced. Figure
shows the steps and phases of the implementation.
The implementation can be divided in four major phases. The first
phase is the basic planning that is centralized. It includes the first
four steps of implementation. The initial step is the awareness of
the LPS’ key benefits. Usually the awareness of top management is
caused by success stories of lean enterprises and the pressure for
significant improvements in the own enterprise. In the second step,
management has to check whether the enterprises strategy goes
along with the general principles and philosophy of LPS. For the
sustainable success, management has to commit to the LPS and all
the consequences of the lean transition. Subsequently, the strategic
planning of LPS is carried out and strategic goals as well as key
performance indicators are defined. In the third step, the conceptual
design of LPS is made. Accordingly, the sub-goals and principles
are deduced from general goals. The respective methods and tools
for each principle are determined.

428 4th International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production (CARV2011), Montreal, Canada 2011
Employee Participation in the Implementation of Lean Production Systems 429

1
Awareness

2 Lean Assessment/
Strategic Planning of LPS Commitment to LPS Basic
Planning
3 Conceptual Design (Centralized)
of LPS
4 LPS Implementation
Master Planning Adoption of LPS Design
5 Organizational Changes
for Implementation Setting Up
(Decentralized)
6 LPS Implementation Decision on Local
Detailed Planning Fields of Actitvities
7 Pilot project 1 Pilot
…
Pilot project n Rollout
(Decentralized)
8 Implementation 1 Rollout
…
Implementation n
Sequence
9 Daily Operations and Daily Operations
Decision Continuous Improvement (Decentralized)

© IFU t

Figure 1 : Stepwise implementation of LPS according to [12]

This happens still on a very centralized and strategic level of the implementation. Four different organizational structures could be
enterprise. In some cases, the shop committee is involved but identified:
workers rarely participate on this stage. At the last step of basic Self-controlled (no additional structure)
planning, a master plan for implementation is prepared which Staff Unit
provides a basis for further implementation on decentralized levels. LPS-Department
The second phase is called setting up and describes the Champions
preparations for the actual implementation of LPS. In step 5, the In each of the four approaches, the general line organization
necessary changes in organization are made. This strongly persists. If no additional units or departments support the general
depends on the decisions made in basic planning because different line organization, a self-controlled implementation prevails. All LPS-
organizational forms are possible. specific tasks and responsibilities are then assumed by the general
The sixth step includes the detailed planning, which considers local line organization. Usually this approach is used in small and
conditions. Thereby, internal and external customers of the medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford additional staff
respective department are described and the LPS is adjusted members and have a limited scope of implementation. In self-
concerning the particular products and processes. Furthermore, the controlled implementation, information goes top down. Hence,
existing qualification of the employees is compared with the management’s LPS-specific qualification and the belief in the lean
qualification concepts. The relevant roles necessary in the transition have to be extraordinary.
respective organizational structure are assigned to employees
regarding their qualification and individual competency.
M S
The third phase is the rollout, which starts with one or more pilot
projects. The experiences made in this step help to avoid
unfavorable implementation strategies. In step 8 the actual rollout is
carried out and the LPS is implemented in all departments of the LPS
enterprise. The last phase and step of implementation is the daily
operations and continuous improvement. D1 D2 D3
2.2 Organizational structure during LPS implementation
The implementation of an LPS causes various additional tasks and
roles in an enterprise, such as steering committee, LPS-consultant,
C C C
Champion etc.. Lean specific knowledge has to be imparted from
one role to another, in order to receive a deep understanding of
lean principles and to achieve a lean culture. In literature and M: Management D: Department
industry, several different roles and job descriptions exist. [10], [12],
[13], [14], [15] In an LPS implementation, all of these roles have to LPS: LPS-Department C: Champion
be assigned. However, this can be realized in different S: Staf f Unit
organizational structures. Thereby, the general line structure is
Figure 2 : Organizational Structure of LPS implementation
maintained but LPS specific structures are established to support