Exploring communication practices in lean production

Abstract

This study examines the daily work practices at an organization that successfully incorporates lean production practices into the organizational culture, and reveals a pattern of practices used by managers in their daily work. This pattern of communication practices is consistent across the organization's manufacturing sites. Subsequent examination of archival qualitative data confirms the existence of the identified pattern of practices. An essential part of lean production is that participants are all involved in improvement activities. The collaborative nature of these activities highlights the importance of communication practices as a lubricant between managers and workers. The communication practices identified in this study appear consistently in strong lean production environments, while the opposite practices appear in weak lean production and traditional US-style environments.