Lean After Layoffs

[David Dodd]

Last September, as the economic news was becoming very negative, I started a thread here titled, "Lean and Job Security." My main point there was that the surest way to kill a lean initiative is to use the improvements brought about by lean as the justification for eliminating jobs.

Much has happened since September. The ecomony worsened significantly in the fourth quarter of 2008, and most experts believe it has also contracted in the first quarter of 2009. Because of the recession, several printing companies have gone out of business, and many others have closed plants and laid off workers just to survive. No doubt, we'll see more of this before the recession ends.

No one really knows when our economy will begin to recover, but I don't think it's too soon to begin thinking about how to come out of this recession as a stronger, more profitable business. Lean should never be used as a tool for layoffs, but if a company has been forced to reduce headcount in order to survive, lean can and should be used to strengthen the company's post-recession recovery. Ironically, a dramatic and forced reduction in company size can provide a powerful catalyst for a successful lean transformation. That's what happened at Toyota, and it's happened that way at many other companies as well.

The last thing that managers should do is to allow the economic recovery to lure them back into the old ways of doing things.