The Toyota production system, well known as simply Lean, has replaced mass production as the most efficient manufacturing system. Lean’s fundamental principles (e.g., customer value, value stream, flow, pull and perfection) guide management to reduce waste time and expense, and therefore cost, from a company’s principle transformation operations.

In December 2004, pepitoneworldwide announced a significant enhancement to Lean. Called Lean for Whole Systems or Lean/WS, this enhancement extends the application of Lean principles to the workers involved in transformation operations, and incorporates new principles for work design and workforce management that are drawn from the human sciences.

Lean/WS resolves a major shortcoming of Lean—Lean’s failure to address the human side of work systems—by integrating metrics for workforce impact and facilitating improved workforce performance. The effect of Lean/WS for companies that already use Lean is increased potential to reduce waste and increase customer value, each of which can lead to substantial operational and financial benefits.

Lean/WS adds critical human-performance metrics to Lean’s value-stream map. This addition provides management with new insight and greater understanding of the workforce’s impact on operations performance, which increases management’s control and precision, and leads to significant operations improvement.

Furthermore, this addition of the human side of work systems also extends the application of Lean methodology to a much broader range of industries, companies and business functions, especially to those with human-dependent operations (e.g., call centers, delivery services, field sales, and technical/professional services).

Lean/WS was co-developed by Jim Pepitone, managing director of pepitoneworldwide, and John Lusted, principle consultant for Bandera Performance, an Atlanta-area operations engineering and consulting firm. Pepitone and Lusted have collaborated over eight years to create, validate, and formalize this enhancement.

Because Lean/WS is a natural extension of Lean methodology, Pepitone and Lusted believe it needs to be made available to industry without intellectual property restrictions. Accordingly, they will feely share Lean/WS through professional papers, conference presentations, and in-house educational seminars.

Contact pepitoneworldwide today at information@pepitone.com and tell us how we can support your work.

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