Quality of working life in the automobile industry: A Canada‐UK comparative study

Will the real relationship between lean and safety/ergonomics please stand up?

This paper provides a review of studies containing safety and ergonomic outcomes in lean manufacturing (LM) environments over the past 40 years. The aim is to identify effects from specific LM methods on specific safety/ergonomic outcomes, to understand the relationship in greater detail. One hundred and one studies containing one hundred and seventy outcomes were identified. Thirty-seven outcomes pertained to just-in-time (JIT) production, which contained twenty-three negative, eleven neutral, and three positive safety/ergonomic outcomes. Conversely, twenty-six outcomes pertained to 5S and consisted of twenty-four positive, two negative, and no neutral outcomes. The most common negative JIT outcome was stress and mental strain, while the most common positive 5S outcome was a tie between safety performance and hazard exposure. Studies containing other methods were fewer in number with more mixed outcomes. These findings suggest that individual LM methods, especially JIT and 5S, uniquely contribute to the safety/ergonomic outcomes attributed to LM.

Values-in-action that support safe production

INTRODUCTION

Safe production is a sustainable approach to managing an organization's operations that considers the interests of both management and workers as salient stakeholders in a productive and safe workplace. A supportive culture enacts values versus only espousing them. These values-in-action are beliefs shared by both management and workers that align what should happen in performing organizational routines to be safe and be productive with what actually is done. However, the operations and safety management literature provides little guidance on which values-in-action are most important to safe production and how they work together to create a supportive culture.

METHOD

The researchers conducted exploratory case studies in 10 manufacturing plants of 9 firms. The researchers compared plant managers' top-down perspectives on safety in the performance of work and workers' bottom-up experiences of the safety climate and their rates of injury on the job. Each case study used data collected from interviewing multiple managers, the administration of a climate survey to workers and the examination of the plant's injury rates over time as reported to its third party health and safety insurer.

RESULTS

The researchers found that plants with four values-in-action -a commitment to safety, discipline, prevention and participation-were capable of safe production, while plants without those values were neither safe nor productive. Where culture and climate aligned lower rates of injury were experienced.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The four value-in-actions must all be present and work together in a self-reinforcing manner to engage workers and managers in achieving safe production. Practical application: Managers of both operations and safety functions do impact safety outcomes such as reducing injuries by creating a participatory environment that encourage learning that improves both safety and production routines.

An investigation of the relationship between lean and well-being based on the job demands-resources model

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how just-in-time (JIT)-related job demands, problem-solving job demands and soft lean practices (SLPs) jointly influence employee well-being in terms of work engagement and exhaustion.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the job demands-resources model, lean-related job characteristics were classified as resources or demands, and a set of hypotheses was developed to test their effect on work engagement and exhaustion, including the potential interaction between job resources and demands. The hypotheses were tested using moderated hierarchical regression and structural equation modelling, based on data from 138 workers.

Findings

SLPs act as job resources in a lean company, increasing work engagement and reducing exhaustion. Conversely, JIT-related job demands act as a hindrance, reducing work engagement and increasing exhaustion. However, SLPs can reduce the effect of JIT-related job demands on exhaustion, and JIT-related job demands may enhance the positive effects of SLPs on work engagement.

Research limitations/implications

The study provides no conclusive evidence on the hypothesized role of problem-solving as a challenge job demand.

Practical implications

The results can guide practitioners’ understanding of how to implement lean without harm to employee well-being.

Originality/value

By employing a well-grounded psychological model to test the link between lean and well-being, the study finds quantitative support for: the buffering effect of SLPs on exhaustion caused by JIT-related job demands, and for the role of JIT as a hindrance. These novel findings have no precedent in previous survey-based research. In addition, it reveals the importance of studying SLPs at an individual level, as what matters is the extent to which workers perceive SLPs as useful and supportive.

Power distance in India

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how cultural differentiation can affect the successful transplantation of lean management and production techniques from the parent country to subsidiary countries in the developing world. In particular, the focus will be on car manufacture in India and the role of hierarchy in Indian society, with reflection on how this seeps into workplace and power relations.

Design/methodology/approach

Lean production techniques have been hailed as revolutionising modern manufacturing, particularly in the automotive sector. In developed world countries, car manufacturers have made significant gains in efficiency and productivity as a result of their implementation. However, as many of these multinational companies (MNCs) have expanded production into rapidly-developing nations to take advantage of both their market and low-labour costs, the introduction of lean production practices have met some resistance. This is because certain underpinning concepts and values of the lean system, such as team work, delegation of authority and upward communication can be considered incompatible with aspects of local culture and employees’ attitude towards work and their superiors. The analysis presented is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with managers and workers from an India-based subsidiary of a MNC car manufacturer and engagement with the existing literature.

Findings

It concludes that paternal relationships, religious values and group orientation in Indian society have a significant impact on the dynamics of the workplace and result in a brand of power distance that is specific to this national context, raising questions about the suitability of universal implementation of lean production practices.

Originality/value

“Power distance” has become a catch-all term for cultures with an orientation towards hierarchy and status in society. However, this categorisation masks some of the factors belying the phenomenon and intricacies relating to how it plays out in the workplace. It is simplistic to postulate that high power distance cultures might be incompatible with management approaches that decentralise authority and increase worker participation. Rather than rely on overgeneralisations, the analysis provided has attempted to deconstruct the composition of power distance in the Indian context and document systematically how features of Indian culture conflict with the principles of lean production techniques, using a case study from an Indian subsidiary of a MNC. In particular, the study finds that religion, caste and paternalism create an India-specific power distance that manifests itself in worker behaviour and workplace relationships.

Interactions between lean management and the psychosocial work environment in a hospital setting - a multi-method study

Background

As health care struggles to meet increasing demands with limited resources, Lean has become a popular management approach. It has mainly been studied in relation to health care performance. The empirical evidence as to how Lean affects the psychosocial work environment has been contradictory. This study aims to study the interaction between Lean and the psychosocial work environment using a comprehensive model that takes Lean implementation information, as well as Lean theory and the particular context into consideration.

Methods

The psychosocial work environment was measured twice with the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) employee survey during Lean implementations on May-June 2010 (T1) (n = 129) and November-December 2011 (T2) (n = 131) at three units (an Emergency Department (ED), Ward-I and Ward-II). Information based on qualitative data analysis of the Lean implementations and context from a previous paper was used to predict expected change patterns in the psychosocial work environment from T1 to T2 and subsequently compared with COPSOQ-data through linear regression analysis.

Results

Between T1 and T2, qualitative information showed a well-organized and steady Lean implementation on Ward-I with active employee participation, a partial Lean implementation on Ward-II with employees not seeing a clear need for such an intervention, and deterioration in already implemented Lean activities at ED, due to the declining interest of top management. Quantitative data analysis showed a significant relation between the expected and actual results regarding changes in the psychosocial work environment. Ward-I showed major improvements especially related to job control and social support, ED showed a major decline with some exceptions while Ward-II also showed improvements similar to Ward-I.

Conclusions

The results suggest that Lean may have a positive impact on the psychosocial work environment given that it is properly implemented. Also, the psychosocial work environment may even deteriorate if Lean work deteriorates after implementation. Employee managers and researchers should note the importance of employee involvement in the change process. Employee involvement may minimize the intervention’s harmful effects on psychosocial work factors. We also found that a multi-method may be suitable for investigating relations between Lean and the psychosocial work environment.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1472-6963-14-480) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The impact of lean production on musculoskeletal and psychosocial risks: an examination of sociotechnical trends over 20 years

This paper provides an extensive review of studies carried out in lean production environments in the last 20 years. It aims to identify the effects of lean production (negative or positive) on occupational health and related risk factors. Thirty-six studies of lean effects were accepted from the literature search and sorted by sector and type of outcome. Lean production was found to have a negative effect on health and risk factors; the most negative outcomes being found in the earliest studies in the automotive industry. However, examples of mixed and positive effects were also found in the literature. The strongest correlations of lean production with stress were found for characteristics found in Just-In-Time production that related to reduced cycle time and reduction of resources. Increased musculoskeletal risk symptoms were related to increases of work pace and lack of recovery time also found in Just-In-Time systems. An interaction model is developed to propose a pathway from lean production characteristics to musculoskeletal and psychosocial risk factors and also positive outcomes. An examination is also made of the changing focus of studies investigating the consequences of lean production over a 20-year period. Theories about the effects of lean production have evolved from a conceptualization that it is an inherently harmful management system, to a view that it can have mixed effects depending on the management style of the organization and the specific way it is implemented.

Dimensões e indicadores da qualidade de vida e do bem-estar no trabalho

Investigou-se a influência de dimensões da qualidade de vida e bem-estar no trabalho (salários e benefícios; oportunidades de uso e desenvolvimento das próprias competências; condições físicas e de segurança no ambiente de trabalho; relacionamento e comunicação entre supervisores e empregados; relacionamento interpessoal com colegas de trabalho) sobre seus indicadores (comprometimento organizacional afetivo, satisfação no trabalho, afetos positivos dirigidos ao trabalho). Duzentos e oitenta e quatro empregados do setor elétrico estatal responderam a escalas de avaliação dos diferentes construtos investigados. As oportunidades de uso e desenvolvimento das próprias competências foram o principal preditor positivo dos três indicadores considerados. Tais oportunidades caracterizam-se como um recurso motivacional do contexto laboral que influencia positivamente os indicadores da qualidade de vida e bem-estar no trabalho.

Job design under lean manufacturing and its impact on employee outcomes

The implications of lean manufacturing for employee well-being remain unclear as previous research yields conflicting findings and struggles to identify an applicable model of job design. This paper adapts and integrates both the job characteristics model and the job demands–resources model to demonstrate the everyday implications of lean manufacturing for job design, and in doing so, how job designed according to lean manufacturing principles influence motivational and health-related outcomes for employees. A research agenda is created to improve our understanding of the employee experience of lean work, and a number of practical implications for the configuration of jobs under lean manufacturing are outlined.