An Investigation on Employee Welfare in Lean Organisations

Chapter 1: Introduction

The engineering industry is undergoing sweeping changes. It is becoming more market oriented and this is imposing requirements for short lead times, adoption to customer needs and flexibility (the ability to rapidly modify the circumstances of production). Capital rationalisation measures call for manufacturing in small batches, low inventory levels and flexibility. Success in such a scenario depends on the adoption of advanced manufacturing concepts which are characterised by their ability to allow rapid response to continuously changing customer requirements and flexible manufacturing systems that reduces product cycle time, increase quality and allow rapid changes in design.

Since the 1960s management have worked towards making technology and labour more adaptable to the needs of production. (Pollert, 1987, p. 1). Nevertheless, within the context of ever increasing competition, flexibility has apparently graduated from being a secondary outcome of other means of maximising profits, to the top of the priority list. World class manufacturing is a managerial strategy designed to achieve that goal. It is, in essence, a collective term for a number of production processes and organisational strategies which all have flexibility as their primary concern (Amanda Haynes, 1999).

When talking about World Class Manufacturing, according to Jacobsen (1995-1996, p. 1),World Class Manufacturing is an umbrella term for a variety of forms of work organisation; managerial and manufacturing techniques; processes; and systems, each of which has as its underlying raison d'être a capacity for increasing the flexibility of an enterprise. Furthermore generally World Class Manufacturing is considered to be existent where a number of such elements are combined to address an enterprise's need for flexibility, including considerations of technology, process and personnel. Lean manufacturing is one of the leading concepts of World Class Manufacturing.

Lean is producing the maximum sellable products or services at the lowest operational cost, while optimising inventory levels. Lean Manufacturing fundamentally seeks to remove a non-value-added process which is generally known as Waste from production in order to improve efficiency.

Today's workplace is being shaped by an integrated and global economy. The organisation of work and the composition of the labour force are changing rapidly. These changes have an impact on workers in every segment of the economy. Forms of work organization, such as lean production, continuous improvement, process reengineering, and downsizing have taken the world by storm, but with little understanding of their impact on worker health and well-being.

The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the work environment in lean manufacturing in four main areas:

· The issues of job security.

· Employee involvement.

· Employee satisfaction.

· Safety of the working environment for employees on the shop floor.

There are many tools and techniques used in lean manufacturing proclaiming to achieve the mentioned above employee welfare issues, and there are many books, papers, and articles about the benefits of lean and on the other hand not as much can be said for the issues regarding the employee welfare, and setbacks of such a manufacturing system. Nevertheless, this paper will not present any primary data concerning this issue it will try to analyse as many statistics and papers regarding the employee welfare as possible and discuss the outcomes to try to come to a better understanding of the fulfilment of the lean tool and techniques to the employees and shop floor workers welfare.