Preface

Overview of Proposed Book

The main concept of this book—Lean Work Design—comes directly from our view that lean operations is the result of how the work is designed. To have lean operations we must have a lean work design. Lean Work Design uses three existing theories of work design to study lean operations and to identify the principles involved in realizing lean operations. First, it relies on systems theory to conceptualize how lean operations differ from other work designs. Second, it uses Hopp and Spearman’s (2004) definition of lean as a system that buffers throughput against variance using minimal buffering costs, where these buffering costs are the cost of having an inventory buffer, a capacity buffer, and a lead time buffer. Third, it uses organizational information processing theory to understand how the lean work design allows different types of information to be processed. So, lean work design is viewed in this book as a work design that attempts to maximize system productivity and effectiveness while minimizing the costs of the system buffers. It does this by achieving tighter integration of its system components, which in turn is accomplished by using work design methods that incorporate a systems view of the organization. So, work design methods not only create specialized tasks to perform an operation but also integrate tasks, which seek to coordinate performance of these operational tasks to accomplish effective, efficient delivery of the service and product. We attempt to demonstrate that appropriate work design methods consciously seek to incorporate a systems view and coordination into the design of a production or service process.

Lean work designs were originally created through trial and error on the shop floor using general principles. The inventors of lean work design used all the existing principles of work design that they found valuable. To do this they intently studied the work designs of many other businesses to obtain ideas. For example, Taiichi Ohno describes how in the 1960s as vice-president of Toyota he led the improvement of Ford’s workflow system to create the “Toyota production system, [which] however, is not just a production system. … [but is] a management system adapted to today’s era of global markets and high-level computerized information systems” (Ohno 1988, p. xv). Currently, we know much more about how to achieve a lean work design. The principles to accomplish this are examined in this book.

With the focus of this book on lean work design, we intend to demonstrate that making work design decisions based on a limited set of lean principles is an important step toward a lean management system. In turn, this lean management system creates a lean production system that minimizes the capacity, inventory, and lead time buffers used to protect throughput from system variance and thus, can be considered lean (see Hopp and Spearman 2004). The importance of making work design decisions about what techniques to use based on principles and not on programs or fads is what has led to new ways of thinking for Shigeo Shingo, Taiichi Ohno, and others who have led the current productivity improvements. For this reason the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence (www.shingoprize.org) bases its model on 10 guiding principles and not on the implementation of work practices.

From an organization theory point of view, the system can be seen as hierarchical levels with different responsibilities and accountability at each level. Thereby, each level sets the boundary conditions for the lower level. It follows that all work design answers how one task is to be coordinated with another task and how activities are to respond to variance (or deviations form the plan) in the environment and within the system. A first step to do this is for work design to answer the question of how the different elements and knowledge sources within an organization are aligned to a common objective. It is important for the work design to address this issue, since people working for a company are individuals with their own lives and dreams. Further, since the objectives of its customers change, companies must change their goals and objectives, so a major, vital role of management in any system is to ensure that goals are clearly communicated throughout the organization and that everyone is making the effort to achieve those goals. This means that management must have a measurement system in place to determine if it is progressing toward its goals.

Consequently, the goal of this book is not simply to present a “how to” about lean operations, but to use multiple theories to explain “how” lean works. Lean tools are not effective by their use itself—they only become effective if applied to the right problem. In other words it should be clear “why” a certain tool should be applied. This then incorporates the scientific method into Lean Work Design—as in science, one first has to know the problem and the available methodologies before a methodology to solve the problem can be selected. The reader is expected to actively create their own knowledge about lean by engaging in asking “why.”

So, this book is not about the many tools in lean. This book is creating an understanding of the lean concepts and how to actively use the lean concepts in work design to create structure and facilitate communication to get work done. The book provides a knowledge structure that can be adapted to the day-to-day problems encountered by managers of many different types of work systems.

Structure of Proposed Book

This book introduces the fundamentals of Lean operations which are a key to creating a Lean Work Design. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to lean work design. The customer and its needs take on the principal position in lean work design, which is discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 extends this customer focus introducing processes and process flows to meet customer needs. Chapters 4 to 6 focus on important concepts related to process flow culminating in the introduction of Hopp and Spearman (2004) and their definition of lean: Chapter 4 introduces Little’s Law, Chapter 5, process variance and Chapter 6, the concept of buffers. The focus then changes to the human factor in any organization: Chapter 7 focuses on the management of people; Chapter 8 focuses on the creation of action through the operational structure facilitating the flow of materials and information; and Chapter 9 emphasizes the importance of communication to align goals and integrate knowledge. A final summary is provided in Chapter 10.

References

Goldratt, E.M., and J. Cox. 2004. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. 3rd revised ed. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press.

Hopp, W.J., and M.L. Spearman. 2004. “To Pull or Not to Pull: What Is the Question?” Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 6, no. 2, pp. 133–48.

Ohno, T. 1988. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Published in Japanese by Diamond, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, 1978. Translation into English by New York, NY: Productivity Press.

Shingo, S. 1989. A Study of the Toyota Production System from and Industrial Engineering Viewpoint. 1st revised ed. Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press.