Three Decades of Lean Production: Practice, Ideology, and Resistance

Abstract

Employers have been implementing lean production outside of Japan for more than 30 years. During this time, the concept has found application in work environments far removed from its origins in the automobile industry. This article analyzes the long-term impact of lean production on the organization of work. I distinguish between the innovations of lean production and the ideological claims made by its exponents. Drawing on research in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the article asks whether lean production represents a new regime of post-Fordism for organizing work. I challenge commonly advanced claims that lean production provides for skill development, increased employee participation, and an enhanced quality of work life. I explain the endurance of lean production by reference to three main factors: a crisis in which production management thought and practice confronted new developments in manufacturing; the rise of neoliberal political economy involving the rejection by employers and governments of earlier notions of citizenship at work; and the weakening of trade unions. Finally, consideration is given to investigations of how workers and, where they have existed, unions have experienced, responded to, and sometimes reshaped lean production.