Introduction
The
Human Side of Lean Manufacturing
refers to those elements of lean and corporate culture that impact
people's attitudes, their interactions with others and their
interaction with the technical processes. It is important because
people are part of the system
and part of the process.
It has taken well over twenty-five years
for Lean Manufacturing to have significant impact in the United
States. Even today, it can be argued that most manufacturers talk
big but implement poorly. More than anything else,
problems on the Human Side are responsible for this
tardiness.
Difficulties With The Human Side
One
difficulty in discussing the Human Side is that
it permeates every
other aspect of lean, often in subtle ways. It cannot be
isolated and addressed as a separate issue.
Kanban, for example
seems to be a simple, mechanistic arrangement of
stockpoints, cards and rules. However, when employed effectively,
kanban positively influences teamwork, setup reduction,
quality and other areas of process improvement. These areas, in turn, can make or break the kanban system.
Another difficulty involves the difference between "influence" and "cause."
"Cause" means that action A always results in effect
B. Influence
means that action A enhances or increases the probability of
effect B provided that other actions C, D and F also occur
with proper
proportion and timing. However, result B, still, may or may not
occur. We often prefer to think about causes rather than influences.
-
Causes
are clean, precise, predictable;
-
influences
are messy, probabilistic, uncertain and conditional.
Examples From The Human Side
Many pages on our site illustrate how the Human Side
influences success on the technical side and vice versa. Here are
some of them:
Cellular Manufacturing- I will
soon have a new article on the human side of workcells. In the
meantime, our video,
"The Human Side of Lean Manufacturing,"
dramatically shows the interaction of cell arrangements
(Technical) and people (Socio). In this video, workers describe how
they designed, built and operate their own workcell. They discuss
the changes it has brought to their attitudes, relationships and
quality of work life.
Socio Technical Systems-
Summarizes Eric Trist's work from the 1950's and condenses it into
Principles of Socio Technical Systems design.
Decoding
The DNA of the Toyota Production System- Summary of
Kent & Spear's classic paper on Toyota's culture and how it views
work as an ongoing experiment in process improvement.
Jidoka- This story,
related by Taiichi Ohno, shows how seemingly minor differences in
attitude between two supervisors produced dramatically
different results.
The Psychology of SPC shows how
Statistical Process Control (technical) produced behavioral changes
(socio) that dramatically improved quality in a simple assembly
process.
Setup Reduction-
The graphic on this page illustrates the chain of influences and
causal factors involved in large lot sizes. Note that most of the
links reflect the attitudes of people (socio) that result in large
lots (technical).
The Virtuous
Circle of Teams- illustrates how team training leads
to process improvements (technical) that influence attitudinal and
behavioral changes (socio) that further enhance performance.
The Power of Teams-
Extensive series of articles on teams and team development.
Tales From
Twelve O'clock High- Excellent article on leadership
illustrated through the classic film "Twelve O'clock High."
The film illustrates how leadership (socio) affects combat
operations (technical) in the form of aircraft availability, bombing
accuracy and losses.
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History of The Human Side
While
an emphasis on the Human Side of Lean is new, the ideas and concepts
are not. Great leaders from the dawn of human history understood
it, at least intuitively.
 In
the narrower field of manufacturing, the formal exposition of such
concepts dates back at least as far as
Lillian Gilbreth in the
1920's as well as the
Hawthorne experiments. Eric Trist
developed Socio Technical Systems in the early 1950’s.
 Of
W.
Edward Deming's famous
Fourteen Points,
at least eleven related to the Human Side. Then there was
Abraham
Maslow,
Douglas McGregor and many others who contributed over the
decades. Most of
this early work had little impact outside the classrooms of business
schools.
The
early Japanese literature on Just-In-Time and Toyota
from the 1970's & 1980's emphasized the
human side of the system as one of
two underlying themes:
1)
Eliminating Waste
2) Respect for People.
For a variety of reasons, the "respect for people" aspect of TPS was
mostly lost in transference to the West. Actually, much of the
systemic nature of TPS was also lost in the translation. Early
efforts at applying TPS principles, for example, sometimes focused
on "kanban cards" or "Quality Circles" as The answer
with little consideration for SMED, workcells or anything else.
In the case of
Taiichi Ohno,
emphasis on the human side holds some irony. Ohno was not usually
considered a "people person." He was, however, pragmatic. If
"respect for people" was necessary for Toyota's success, he was
willing to go along. For
Shigeo Shingo, the human side
seemed to come more naturally. Our article summarizing Spear and
Kent's paper, "Decoding
The DNA of the Toyota Production System," shows how
the underlying corporate culture plays into Toyota's success.
Socio Technical Systems
Eric
Trist's work on
Socio Technical Systems (STS)
provides a
framework for understanding the
relationships between the technical and human aspects of Lean
Manufacturing. STS views a factory as an
interlocking system of causes, influences and effects.
Some of which are primarily technical (e.g., plant layout) and
others primarily socio or human (e.g.,communication, loyalties or
objectives).
Our
page on Socio Technical Systems
introduces the concept. A subsequent page condenses the concept into
Principles Of Socio Technical Design.
Further pages show how the
principles apply to the conversion of an
assembly
line to Cellular Manufacturing and the conversion of a
functional
layout to a cellular layout.
References
SPEAR,
Steven and BOWEN, H. Kent, "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota
Production System.",Harvard Business Review, September-October,
1999.
DAVIS,
Stanley M., Managing Corporate Culture, Ballinger Publishing, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1984.
A Personal Note
 Many
years ago I enrolled in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University.
In Engineering, equations predicted outcomes; Steel and aluminum
were stable; Newton's simple laws explained everything; the vagaries
of people seemed irrelevant.
My
simple little world has changed. People, it seems, are important.
Hope, fear, expectation and intention is now part of engineering.
Even physics has changed with the advent of Chaos Theory and the
ever deeper implications of Quantum Mechanics.
Ignoring
these apparently new realities only invites trouble, failure or
disaster. Our best hope is to understand, however imperfectly, and
use that understanding to design effective factories and processes.
Quarterman Lee
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