ABSTRACT
A rigid mass production system leads to a highly structured, centralized, and inflexible command and control management system. The management hierarchy in a mass production environment is generally several levels deep. Approvals for changes have to flow up and down this chain of command. Departmental boundaries, not process requirements, determine where processes initiate and terminate, resulting in processes being chopped into inefficient subprocesses. Examples of this phenomenon found in most mass production environments include the processes of maintenance, quality, procurement, design and engineering, customer service, scheduling, shipping, and invoicing, all of which snake their way through department after department, in-basket after in-basket, paper queue after paper queue, until they are handed off to completion. While all of this is going on, orders, projects, purchases, and deliveries are being expedited, requiring various search missions for papers, negotiations for priority, and the occasional compromise. Managers in the mass production environment are usually more concerned with their departmental objectives than with organizational objectives which results in the dissipation of energy and resources as departmental objectives are achieved at the expense of organizational objectives.
