ABSTRACT
People and their ideas for improvement are close to the heart of lean production. They can also seem to be close enough to the neck to cause a pain there. Perhaps that is because of lean leaders’ experience when they go to start production only to find one or more people have “called in” as unplanned absences. With production finely balanced to the rhythm of takt time, missing a person or two is a big deal. Without just the right number of people, flow does not flow, pull can deteriorate into stockouts, and the takt beat is uneven and sporadic.
