ABSTRACT
The most stupendous improvement plans in the world will be ineffective unless they are translated into practice. Often at this stage the resistance of habit will prevent shop workers from implementing improvement plans. Industrial Engineering (IE) generates improvement plans based on waste found in an investigation of the status quo. It allows two kinds of expenditures in the course of developing improvement plans: unavoidable materials costs and minimal labor costs. The proponents of work design claim that their approach is by far less costly than IE, since, without exception, work design improvement plans are less expensive than IE improvement plans. Whenever a new policy for improving efficiency comes out, some Japanese companies make up a slogan to announce the president's plans. If the company president's slogan is "Reduce Inventory!" then division heads and department chiefs will take up the same cry and group leaders and foremen will similarly issue calls for inventory reduction.
