ABSTRACT
Many emerging lean firms reorganize by product family when the initial lean processes are formalized, implemented, and are being managed on an ongoing basis. Although various personnel decisions may have been made during the life of the project, at this stage implementing additional personnel reductions or removing any remaining anchor-draggers can destroy the emerging lean teamwork in the enterprise. Maintaining commitment to the initial lean cultural principles is essential to sustaining the lean enterprise, chief among which is the maxim that no one loses their job for implementing an improvement, and their coworkers don’t lose their jobs either. At this stage, everyone is viewed as having implemented improvements, and normal attrition and team-based evaluations are the vehicle of choice for eliminating nonteam players. The teams will weed these folks out in a hurry.
