I know lot of entrepreneurs’, businessmen and financial managers would hate me for this but to be honest I need to initiate this discussion.
Lean Management which means less people and more work, is no more a healthy affair.
Companies and Organisations have begun to squeeze down the number of employees they had and depend more on automation techniques.
Optically it looks good and economical as well.
But with one man doing work of many the quality of human input has definitely been effected. some of us have become more robotic in outlook but patients of stress, time management, family disorders and sleeplessness. Many others keep switching from company to company because they are considered slow, unresponsive or poor performers.
Even machines are uneasy about lean management. They often stop working for poor up keep and maintenance issues. The result is business down times. Contractors are called in to repair and maintain. It takes more time and an effort with less involvement. I wonder automation has not reduced the number of valves or gadgets, the length of lines, the choke point of processes rather few more controllers have been incorporated in the factories and plants. And to keep these machines, processes and flows on track we actually need to organize much more number of preventive maintenance checks than earlier times.
with reduced manpower dealing with same number of work activities actually lead to an organisation with lot of in stress and unhealthy workers.
The advisors of lean management also recommended everyone in the organisation to be a fire fighters. CEO’s immediately asked safety teams to be reduced and only truck drivers to work as Fire Truck Operators. Today operation teams remain worried if they would be able to fight the fire or manage the emergency shut down.
Many of us don’t even realize that fire fighting cannot be left to volunteers or auxiliary teams. It is a specialized job which needs focus, ownership and specialist trainings through out the year. An additional responsibility delegated like this is never owned the way we expect it to be owned by those being delegated.
one teacher teaching for many days bores the class and the quality of training goes down but schools would love having a teacher who can teach multiple subjects or single headedly.
Even data entry operators, security guards, plant operators and or drivers must be rotated but we love forgetting ergonomics.
I strongly feel some of the financial experts and social scientists must carry out case studies to measure the quantifiable fiscal losses that we come across due to inaccurate application of lean management strategies.
The Population of the world continues to grow and by adopting lean management strategies we are doing no good to humanity. An empty mind is a devils mind. An unemployed World Citizen is an available talent for criminal chiefs. We the literate world must plan to engage more humans into our organisations for better work load management and to avoid stress related issues.
I would appreciate comments, agreements and disagreements from my colleagues in the business world to further enrich this discussion, thought process and ideology.
For direct communication on the subject you may write to me at captzahed@Hotmail.com
Thank you for reading this.
Author Zahid Faqir MSPS, MAIR, NEBOSH, IOSH