Hr Role in Lean Management Practices
“Leading the Lean way: Analyzing the HR role for organizational effectiveness in Lean Management Practices” - Manjunath N
ABSTRACT Organizations, the world over are facing stiff and diverse challenges with regard to enriching customer value at the appropriate time and appropriate cost. Thus the essence of customer value entails the organizations to structure their activities in such a way that leverages their cost and time potential. An increasing number of organizations are resorting, thus to a more simplified organization design that embodies built in mechanisms to cater to the core activities and embrace a methodology that abhors waste and with a fierce dedication to excellence. This has seen the emergence of “Lean” management practices as a cornerstone of organizational effectiveness. Lean organizations thrive to provide perfect value through a value creation process that has zero waste. But in pursuit of cost saving in the guise of “Lean”, most acclaimed lean practicing organizations attempt to over automate and thereby leading to qualitative underutilization of human resources. Successful leadership and Self-reinforcing human resources are thus seen as the backbone of a lean production system to help it generate customer value. With this as the backdrop, the paper seeks to propose different views on lean management and the role of human resources and leadership in building a lean culture. The conceptual part of the paper would be based on review of available literature on various dimensions of lean management and empirical part would include the data compiled from secondary sources.
Key words: Lean management, Organizational effectiveness, Qualitative human resources, Leadership.
INTRODUCTION
Organizations ranging from hospitals to manufacturing struggle to find sustainable continuous improvement methods. The complexities and interrelationships of such organizations require that continuous improvement efforts be broad and self-reinforcing.
ABSTRACT Organizations, the world over are facing stiff and diverse challenges with regard to enriching customer value at the appropriate time and appropriate cost. Thus the essence of customer value entails the organizations to structure their activities in such a way that leverages their cost and time potential. An increasing number of organizations are resorting, thus to a more simplified organization design that embodies built in mechanisms to cater to the core activities and embrace a methodology that abhors waste and with a fierce dedication to excellence. This has seen the emergence of “Lean” management practices as a cornerstone of organizational effectiveness. Lean organizations thrive to provide perfect value through a value creation process that has zero waste. But in pursuit of cost saving in the guise of “Lean”, most acclaimed lean practicing organizations attempt to over automate and thereby leading to qualitative underutilization of human resources. Successful leadership and Self-reinforcing human resources are thus seen as the backbone of a lean production system to help it generate customer value. With this as the backdrop, the paper seeks to propose different views on lean management and the role of human resources and leadership in building a lean culture. The conceptual part of the paper would be based on review of available literature on various dimensions of lean management and empirical part would include the data compiled from secondary sources.
Key words: Lean management, Organizational effectiveness, Qualitative human resources, Leadership.
INTRODUCTION
Organizations ranging from hospitals to manufacturing struggle to find sustainable continuous improvement methods. The complexities and interrelationships of such organizations require that continuous improvement efforts be broad and self-reinforcing.