Although I am a huge fan of the principals behind lean manufacturing, I have some serious doubts about the ability of this concept to maintain quality in our present economy and still remain lean. As demand for units fluctuate in today's market lean manufacturing has a tough time being lean during the down turns and maintaining quality during the up times. Let me explain my reasoning, when a manufacturer has orders for a million orders it must have the manpower to build these units in a lean but high quality manner. That doesn't sound too bad but when just a couple of months down the road the market's demand is only for 250k units how do you manage all the manpower? Do you lay them off? Do you put them in new projects? Do you transfer them to other plants that might be making more units? All are possibilities that can be made to look good on paper, but do they really solve the issue? These ideas for solving manpower needs put too much stress on your workforce that hinders its ability to build a quality product. In the case of laying off workers you are losing quality workers that have been trained to accomplish certain tasks with the highest quality, if they were trained properly of course. So what you might say or we don't have a need for them. All is well and good but what happens when you do need workers to accomplish those tasks. Well you have to hire someone, train them and then monitor them until they meet your company's safety, quality and productivity standards. Some companies have moved toward hiring a temporary workforce and feel this can solve the issue. Well after working seventeen years in the auto industry I have found that this is not true, especially when production fluctuates and the process of building the product changes more often. This plan costs a lot of money, some reports I have seen estimates that hiring and training a new worker costs a company $10,000. Now depending on the size of the company this could be too much to lose. In a down market every dollar counts, so can a company afford to keep a full time staff for the up markets on payroll even in a down market? Probably not, I mean lets face it full time workers standing around with a clipboard costs just too much money with little in ROI. Here is what I propose; plan ahead for the down market, we are working our way through one of the worse manufacturing markets in history, so in the future plan for an even worse one. Yes have a temporary workforce that can adjust to a market change similar to the late 70's, but at the same time have the ability to keep the temporary workforce on the job and pull full time work force members offline and train them in other areas of your business. Now when the market goes back up that workforce can be moved back to manufacturing or kept in a new area that they have been trained in during the down market. If this concept is adopted and correctly managed the ROI could far exceed laying off the temporary work force during down markets. First you have a more well rounded workforce that can be moved around giving different area of your company ideas and concepts from other areas of manufacturing, second you might train the employee and they might leave the company and move on but all you lose is traing space and the cost of a temporary worker. Maybe not a perfect situation but it shows your company is behind your workforce by training them to be better employees. In the long run you will have a more flexible workforce that is more involved and cares more about the finished product. Sounds like a place I would want to work.
Side note; this takes an upper management that totally supports the training of the workforce and a middle management that can recognize solid candidates without prejudice. Really for this to be successful the middle management has to be well trained to be able assist in the training of the extra workforce which I have experienced is not always the case with middle management.
