Productive Efficiency and the Lean Production System in Japan and the United States

Abstract

The lean production model originated in Japan, where it was partly responsible for the labor-management cooperation and productive efficiency of Japanese industrial relations during the 1970s and 1980s. Recent evidence suggests that its transference to the US has met with much less success. This article argues that the key to the relative superiority of the lean production system in Japan has to do with the institutional mechanisms in place in that country, but which are absent in the US, to incorporate workers'shopfloor concerns in production. The lean production system runs the risk of improving productivity and product quality through increased worker effort and stress, and reduced worker health and safety. Mechanisms for worker voice insure that this 'mean'side of lean production is foregone, that workers possess a sense of both justice in the sharing of shopfloor rewards and legitimacy in the authority possessed by superiors, and thus that workers willingly cooperate with management to enhance productive efficiency.