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Employees’ Participation and Involvement in Lean Management: The Experience of a Training Program of Assembly Lines Workers
Abstract
This paper tackles the problem of how to train employees to foster involvement and participation to support the implementation of Toyota Production System (TPS). To this aim, it presents the case of a training program aimed at involving workers in a TPS project, increasing their knowledge of the lean management model, and starting a discussion with them, to fine-tune the new organization, especially on the themes of versatility, knowledge exchange, cooperation and teamwork. The training program involved 450 workers of a manufacturing company, it lasted three days per participant, where activities in the classroom and in the shop floor were combined. Different didactic methods were used: theoretical lessons, group discussion and teamwork, didactic games and practical experience in the production line. Results show that the approach was successful and allowed the company to fully reap the benefits of TPS.
... Existing literature reviews have contributed significantly to the understanding of the barriers and enablers of lean methodology in SMEs (Hasle et al., 2012;Hu et al., 2015;Khazanchi et al., 2007;Magnani et al., 2019;Sony and Mekoth, 2019) but have failed to consider comprehensively the lowest hierarchical level, which was previously found crucial (Vidal, 2007). Hence, authors in the field of lean have emphasized the need for a better understanding of FLEs' behavioral aspects, alongside the various contextual determinants (Schmidt, 2011;Zhang et al., 2012), especially in the SME context (Campagna et al., 2020;Hu et al., 2015;Losonci et al., 2017;Pearce et al., 2018) in which companies are significantly lagging in lean implementation, besides the great potential (Pech and Van e cek, 2018). However, the existing literature offers anecdotal evidence from studies focusing on employees in SMEs and their role in lean implementation (Hines et al., 2011;Losonci et al., IJLSS 2017Shokri et al., 2016), with the main focus on the identification of critical success factors, readiness to embark on lean applications of human resource practices and measuring employees' performance. ...
Purpose
Existing research evidence shows a fragmented understanding of the roles of first-line employees (FLEs) as essential factors for successful lean implementation in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), provoking recent calls for additional research on the identification of enablers and barriers for lean acceptance among workers. Therefore, this paper aims to identify related enablers and barriers to lean implementation among FLEs and determine future research avenues for improving the understanding of lean methodology implementation in SMEs.
Design/methodology/approach
Relying on a systematic literature review methodology, the authors aimed to synthesize and evaluate available peer-reviewed papers on the role of FLEs in lean implementation in SMEs. General descriptive and thematic analysis comprehensively depicted the selected research topic and identified the main themes within collected papers and potential future research questions.
Findings
The authors identified four main themes related to FLEs’ role in lean implementation: cultural change factors, employee characteristics, management involvement and lean job design. Within each theme, the authors present a comprehensive overview of FLE-related factors and associated enablers and barriers that should be considered for a successful lean implementation in SMEs.
Practical implications
The research outcomes are important to practicing managers in SMEs, helping them facilitate lean acceptance and enhance the likelihood of successful lean implementation.
Originality/value
The insights from this study present building blocks in developing a lean implementation model for SMEs that considers the FLEs’ role more comprehensively.
In Italy corporate restructuring crises are traditionally managed by companies through communication to the workers' representatives about the negative impacts on production structures and on workplaces. Therefore, the trade union representatives adopt defensive methods focused on minimizing the impacts on employment. The role of representatives is subordinate to that of managers who have the goal of making decisions and minimizing the interference of trade unions. Workers also play a secondary role in supporting the union in the negotiation process. In the two corporate cases studied, instead, the possibility emerges for trade union representatives to play a proactive role and to collaborate with management in an agreed solution to the crisis that is more favourable to workers. To arrive at these positive solutions, the fundamental role is played by organizational and technological innovation that significantly improves company performance, as supported by the direct participation of workers. In these cases, coordination between the factors at stake is ensured by the ability of the actors to manage a risky and complex innovative process in a shared way.
This paper introduces the Lean School, a Learning Factory, along with a “game” of physical
simulation that is developed in it. All this is focused on teaching-learning, both of students
and professionals, of the potential advantages offered by the implementation of the Lean
Production in the organizations.
The participants gain a practical experience, based on experimental learning, which gives
them a better understanding of the principles and tools of Lean philosophy.
This physical environment is not limited to theoretical teaching, but goes beyond and implements a production system near a real one. It starts from a configuration of a production
plant with an unbalanced system and throughout the different iterations, called productions, introduces and implement the Lean principles, which makes its participants acquire
not only knowledge but also the skills needed to implement an efficient production in their
organizations.
All the constituent elements of the system will be described briefly: the product, the variations thereof, the initial design with its layout, as well as the subsequent productions, and
the results of learning of each one.
Objective: The objective of this article is to understand the concept of lean manufacturing, its philosophy, various tools and techniques, lean implementation benefits and barrier towards lean implementation. Main concepts: Lean manufacturing by now is a widely discussed and applied manufacturing philosophy, in a variety of industries across the globe. The fundamental concept of lean manufacturing is to provide a quality product while also ensuring that the product does not cost too much to the customer. Most organizations today are going through a stage where there is a necessity to respond the rapidly changing customer needs. To sustain their place in the market, many organizations have started following the lean manufacturing concept. Methodology of the research: This article presents a review of the literature and attempts to identify the important and useful contributions to this subject. Results: Lean manufacturing utilizes a wide range of tools and techniques; the choice of tools is situation specific. Many factors contribute to lean success; not only is it mandatory to implement most of the lean tools, but an organization's culture needs transforming too. Companies following lean manufacturing have better flexibility and a good market share. Moreover, lean manufacturing produces an operational and cultural environment that is highly conducive to waste minimization.
This paper discusses the benefits of experiential learning in manufacturing education. While focusing on the general topic area of experiential learning, it seeks to delineate between applications-based learning and service learning. Within that context, the paper provides an approach to teaching subjects within the .manufacturing discipline, such as shop floor operations and lean manufacturing, that are difficult to teach in a classroom setting. The application of experiential learning is provided through field examples, such as working with local companies to provide students with opportunities to apply their classroom knowledge in the evaluation of manufacturing performance on the shop floor of a real plant. The paper evaluates student learning outcomes, and discusses the benefits of experiential learning to both students and project sponsors, including increased student confidence in their ability to evaluate performance and to make suggestions for improvement in manufacturing processes, and sponsors' exposure to new ideas and perspectives at reduced development costs.
Le leve dell’innovazione - lean
- L Campagna
- L Pero
- A Ponzellini