ABSTRACT
A Lean manufacturing or Lean enterprise initiative stands or falls on management and workforce commitment. Implementation of world-class Lean manufacturing requires upper management to agree to a no-layoff policy, whereas labor must in turn repudiate all restrictive work rules. These requirements will doubtlessly encounter resistance from management and labor unless both understand the reasons and the mutual benefits. This section and the ones that follow provide the implementers with information with which to gain buy-in from both entities. Ford and Crowther (1922, 117) summarize the entire science of industrial and labor relations in a single sentence: “It ought to be the employer’s ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman’s ambition to make this possible.”
