Human Resource Lean Management and Its Impact on Employees

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of human resource lean management, beginning with an introduction to lean principles and its origins in the Toyota Production System. It explores the core concepts of lean management, including waste reduction and continuous improvement. The essay then delves into the role of human resources in implementing lean practices, highlighting the significance of employee experiences. It examines two contrasting schools of thought—managerial and deterministic—to illustrate the diverse impacts of lean management on employees. The essay further discusses relevant theories and concepts, such as Six Sigma and business process engineering, and their integration with human resource management. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of aligning lean strategies with HR practices to foster organizational growth and competitive advantage. The essay draws upon various research studies and scholarly articles to support its arguments, providing a well-rounded perspective on the subject.

Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE LEAN MANAGEMENT
Human Resource Lean Management
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Introduction
Lean management is also known as lean Production, has originated from the operating
model of Toyota of 1930, known as "The Toyota Way." The term lean was proposed by John
Krafcik in 1988. The lean management has five principles, namely: stipulate value by exact
product, identification of the product's value stream, value movement without disruptions, let the
consumer pull worth from the manufacturer, and follow perfection (Jones and Womack, 2016).
Lean is considered both a management viewpoint and operational function, which focuses on the
elimination of waste in significant areas like human effort, time management, inventory, and
manufacture space. Lean management plays a vital role in the manufacturing process and
enhances the production system of the organization. With the implication of lean management,
high-quality goods are manufactured, and it is also highly responsive to the needs and demands
of the customers. It aims at producing goods at the lowest cost and within the time constraints.
The assignment aims at explaining the main characteristics of lean management and the role of
human resources while implementing lean with the implications of theories. The essay also
illustrates the importance of employee experiences towards lean management.
Discussion
Lean management
Lean is the organized process of reducing waste so that every step of Production adds
value to the products or services for fulfilling the demands of the customers. Lean manufacturing
is based on the Toyota Production System. The Toyota Production System is a combination of a
socio-technical system that was developed by Toyota which consists of managerial practices and
philosophies. The main objective of this system was to reduce waste, overburden, and

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inconsistency from the production system and was initially known as "Just in time production."
The Toyota Production was translated into "Lean" in the year 1988 by John Krafcik and later
defined by James Womack and David Jones (Nowotarski, Pasławski and Matyja, 2016).
There is no clear definition of Lean. The Lean is only determined by the theoretical
perspective. Many researchers have attempted to define Lean but the absence of definition has
different significances for the researchers and the practitioners who seek to implement Lean.
According to the author, Womack and Jones "lean is a management philosophy based on
continuous improvement, which requires the involvement and commitment of everyone in the
organization and provides an opportunity to improve the results in terms of quality, costs and
lead times."
According to the author Parker (2003) the gathering of explanations on what Lean
actually makes it firmer to make statements to the results of Lean, thus growing the necessities
that researchers identify precisely what they are investigating. According to Karlsson &
Ahlstrom, the absence of a detailed explanation of Lean will lead to problems in identifying
whether variations occurred in an organization are reliable with Lean Production or not, and
therefore problems in appraising the efficiency of the theory itself.
Hackman and Wage man (1995) observed the total quality management concept and
elevated the question of "whether there is such a thing as TQM or whether it has become mainly
a banner under which a potpourri of essentially unrelated organizational changes are
undertaken." This is an official inquiry for any concept similar to total quality management, and
the thought of Lean Production is no exemption.

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In 1992, Womack, Jones, and Roos wrote a book named "The machine that changed the
World." This book made the lean management known to the rest of the world. When Womack et
al., wrote the book, the Toyota and Japanese makers were making a robust performance by
implementing the philosophies of lean management. Though, the full concept of Lean was not
proven and they were only restricted to the auto industry. But today, the influence of lean
Production has been overwhelmingly verified by Toyota's incomparable achievement, and the
ideas have been broadly applied in almost all the industries. The concept given by the book "The
machine that changed the world" suggested a ground contravention investigation of the lean
system in the industries, including merchandise expansion, supplier administration, sales,
service, and manufacture. Many British American companies follow lean thinking in their
enterprise.
Lean Production has been implemented by corporations of various service sectors,
including public and private and industrialized sectors, in current periods, and these corporations
have consequently applied the concept of lean. This has helped them improves the productivity
and outcomes of the company.
Key research issues in human resource management with regards to the study
of employee experiences
The key research issues in human resource management concerning the employees'
experiences are explained with the use of two schools of thought: - managerialist and
deterministic school of thought. The two philosophies explain the consequences of implementing
Lean management or Lean thinking and explains the consequences of the philosophies.

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The employees have different experiences working under lean management. According
to the managerial school of thought, it gives ownership, collaboration, and empowers the
employees, which is proved to be beneficial for the organization.
While on the other hand, under the deterministic school of thought, the employees may
resist changing by opposing the lean thinking concept. The bureaucratic system of controlling the
employees create a stressful working condition for the employees. Both the school of thoughts
are explained below.
Managerial
 The managerial school of thought states that Lean management has a positive impact on
employee experience as well as organizations.
 This gives autonomy to the employees by providing them the opportunity to perform in
the decision making through the process of empowerment and responsibility towards the
culture, vision, and goals of the organization.
 The managerial philosophy gives satisfaction to the employees through more routine
work; therefore, it helps in boosting the morale of the employee.
 Managerial philosophy brings sustainability for the organization through less wastage,
and improved flexibility makes for the industry that is more productive for the future
(Chiarini, Baccaraniand Mascherpa, 2018).
 The improved quality and efficiency inspire the employees and the resources for
revolution and quality control that has been wasted.
 With the managerial school of thought respond to the variations of the market demands
that result in better lead times and rarer delays.

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 The managerial philosophy states that organizations should implement Lean because it
helps in cost-cutting as well as improve customer relationships.
 The approach helps in gaining competitive advantage to the organization which in turn
will prove beneficial for the employees.
Deterministic
 Under this school of thought, Lean management will be bad for the employees. The
employees feel demotivated and stress due to the implementation of Lean in the
organization.
 Determinism philosophy states that all actions are determined completely due to existing
causes. For example, if A is applied B will always happen. Therefore, B happened
because of A.
 Determinism philosophy explains that employees who are under lean management try to
resist the lean because change is the most significant effort towards improvement, and
people do not want to out of their status quo. Due to this, there is a strong resistance
towards the Lean by the employees (AlManei, Salonitis and Xu, 2017).
 Research under this school of thought states that Lean is a fight between organizations
and staff because change is hard to implement, and due to the implementation problems
like the problem of inventory occurs because for reducing costs, low-value raw materials
are kept in hand for the Production. This creates a wrong picture of the organization in
the mind of the employees.
 Lean exploits and controls the workers because everything is utilized to its minimum
level due to low demand and waste reduction. Therefore, constant monitoring of the

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employees is done, which makes them feel low and hence exploits them and reduces the
productivity level.
 Lean exploits and controls the workers because employees involved in the lean were
negatively affected, especially the employees in the assembly line, as there was a reduced
organizational commitment and due to the increased job depression.
Theories and concepts concerning Lean management with human resource
management
Lean management or lean thinking is a process used by organizations to improve the
workplace. The process uses six sigma to enhance its processes. In recent years, the use of
business process engineering and the techniques for the improvement of processes have
increased. These benefits have motivated managers' determinations for efficiency, cost-effective,
productivity, and improved quality results for the customers or the shareholders. Lean and six
sigma have gain popularity because they have a huge impact on the improvement of the
processes. According to the author Shah "the application of the Lean is the bottom-up approach
where administration plays a supportive part in engaging the shop-floor employees to form self-
directed teams that work through cross functioning by adopting lean tools (Kadarova and
Demecko, 2016). While six sigma is a top-down approach where management selects the
projects based on the tactical and monetary goals and then supporting in observing the project,
this indicates the implications and implementations of processes in the organization. According
to the author Turner, the investigation on the effects of lean on the employees is expressively
below examined and explicit. It has become a trend in organizations to implement lean, six
sigma, and other techniques for better results. Therefore, it has become important to examine the
role of human resource management on the impact and implication of lean manufacturing for the

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effective management of the workforce and employee consequences. According to the research
conducted in 2013 by Deming, the process of improvement focuses on various techniques of
operation management, engineering, and quality rather than focusing on human resource
management (AlManei, Salonitis and Xu, 2017). However, other research work found that lean
is reducing disorders in the smooth functioning of the Production with the implementation of
continuous improvement and reducing wastage and motion, and it also explained that the
employees should be provided skills to have control over the working environment in the
organization.
The research also explains that Lean involves a series of methods that suggest a
combination of the application of characteristics of operation management and human resource
management. The flexible manufacture system includes team-based labor organizations with
high assurance human resource practices that involve subject reimbursement for the employees
and focuses on training and empowerment. The organizations with flexible work climate outstrip
more outdated mass-production enterprise. The human resource that empowers the employees or
involves them in the decision making support process management and has a robust result on the
performance. The incorporation of operations and human resource is essential to the success of
quality development and Lean. Constant improvement is not possible without the participation of
the employees (Raghavan, 2019).
The research work of MacDuffie and De Menezes focussed on productivity while other
works emphases on the influence of the lean on the employees. Maximum authors were
concerned about the effort association and job design and effect of the Lean of job satisfaction
and experience of the employees. The authors also observed Lean and other quality management
techniques and a feature of union policy (Distelhorst, G., Hainmueller and Locke, 2017). They

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stated that employees and the unions are linked with the managerial thinking or a
misapprehension whereby employees are convinced that they are part of the process even if the
process does not benefit them. According to the authors, lean management needs motivation,
trained workers, and the combination of human resource practices in the production strategy of
the organization. Lean management connects with a set of business practices linked to the
minimization of wastage with human resource practices, which is related to the extension of the
work skills and inspiration.
Conclusion
The above discussion concludes that lean management is one of the significant
management strategies for the organization of the Production and management of the employees
and provides support for the growth of the organization. Lean management, though, has minor
disadvantages, but modern organizations adopt the strategy for the development and to gain a
competitive advantage to be in the market place. Lean is proving to be the best practice for
excellence in growing organizations. The evolution of Just in Time in Lean management gave it
a new evolution and helped the organizations, as well as the employees, gain quality, enhanced
productivity, fastest delivery, adaptability towards the changing trends of the market, and
increased customer loyalty and satisfaction towards the organization. Therefore, the
organizations can be profitable by implementing the lean inside the enterprise because the Lean
when practiced appropriately, eliminates wastage, energy, and money as well as revise and fix
those areas that create barriers in the development of the organization as well as its employees.

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