Applying Lean Principles to Improve Workforce Management

Using Lean principles, manufacturers have made significant improvements to their operations, from improved productivity, increased resource utilization, to a more accurate understanding of product costs. A Lean enterprise is a business system for organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, and customer relations creating precise customer value with less human effort, less space, and less time.

One area where manufacturers may not have thought to apply Lean is the workforce. But as labor pressures increase and margins tighten, savvy manufacturers are turning their attention to the workforce, and discovering that Lean can help them increase workforce flexibility and agility, and improve their bottom line.

A flexible, motivated workforce is the central component of a successful Lean program. Applying Lean principles to the workforce can play a critical role in ensuring that labor is aligned to demand, which in turn can result in lower costs and shorter lead times. There are three primary areas of improvement that manufacturers should focus on to achieve Lean improvement in the workforce:

• Identifying non value-added labor - In Lean manufacturing waste is anything that adds to the time and cost of making a product, but does not add value from the customer’s point of view. Value-added activities transform products into something the customer wants. Non value-added activities are meaningless to customers, and as a result, customers are not willing to pay for them.
• Measuring and managing variability - Daily changes on the shop floor such as material delays,
  unscheduled machine downtime, absenteeism, changing customer due dates, processing issues, overcommitted resources, and fluctuating productivity create variability and increase lead times and costs. It is important for manufacturers to be able to manage and display information on these variables in real time, so that managers can make proactive decisions to improve operational
  efficiency.
• Motivating the workforce - Understanding what motivates the workforce and then accurately measuring those drivers are critical components of integrating Lean with a successful workforce strategy. Every technology solution requires a motivated workforce to leverage all the benefits offered by increased automation and access to information. Increased productivity, quality, innovation, and agility are hallmarks of a motivated workforce that can embrace business process
  change and help sustain competitive differentiation.