Lean Production Tools Research Articles

Cracking the code of business

Large public companies restructure themselves on a regular basis with the primary goals of achieving better financial performance and demonstrating responsiveness to shareholder interests. However, it is well know that such discontinuities typically result in great stress and confusion amongst employees, particularly over how to achieve new stretch goals. Key functions such as engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, quality, and finance often pursue separate paths to achieve function‐specific goals. This paper utilizes the principles and tools of lean production to decode the CEO’s mandates and deliver practical, solutions‐oriented tools to employees to help achieve stretch business goals. This creates an effective bridge between the language of the CEO and engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, quality, and finance functions. Coupled with LEAN BEHAVIORSSM, an environment can be created that enables widespread employee alignment and commitment to challenging business conditions. The result is the first framework that unifies technical and behavioral components of management.