Can lean principles be applied to so-called knowledge work? This issue is addres
ID: 1201271 • Letter: C
Question
Can lean principles be applied to so-called knowledge work? This issue is addressed in the following article: B. R. Staats and D. M. Upton, “Lean Knowledge Work,” Harvard Business Review, October 2011.
You can view the article here: https://hbr.org/2011/10/lean-knowledge-work . (click through the ad that shows up first)
After accessing and reading this article, respond to the following set of questions.
Required Answers
1. Define what is meant by the term lean (or lean management). To date, what types of organizations have successfully applied lean? Why have these contexts proven fruitful for the application of lean?
2. According to the authors, what is meant by the term knowledge work? Why is it more difficult/ challenging to apply lean principles to this work context?
3. Based on their own research, what do the authors claim to be the primary benefits of applying lean principles to knowledge work?
4. Based on their experience with over 1,800 projects, the authors developed six principles that they say could be used to guide the implementation of lean in regard to knowledge work (such as software and IT-development projects). Provide an overview of each of these principles.
Explanation / Answer
1. Lean management is an approach to improve the work quality and bring efficiency in processes of the organization. Basically, it is relevant to continous improvement on a long term basis. Lean organizations focus on understanding its customer, they understand the value of customer and aims at improving to satisfy the customer needs. This process of understanding customer value and maintaning that sustainability by improving continously goes on and on. It is a steady process, which consumes a lot of time and effort to attain the par standards to provide satisfaction to the customer. This is helpful to the organizations in eliminating waste and improving the work quality.
Lean management can be applied to any organization. It is beneficial to every firm and their process. Mostly, it is applied in the manufacturing process. Thus, it is beneficial for the businesses who are actually dealing in manufacturing industry. It brings smoothness in firms, which eventually reduces quality problems and issues and evens the work flow in the system.
In today's scenario, every business and every firm is focusing on the customer, its value and needs. Customer orientation has become the primary goal of every organization. Thus, lean management is applied in every industry from public to private sector. From health care service to financial service, it is applicable in every industry.
Lean management is originally referred to as lean production system of Toyota.
2. Knowledge work is considered to developing and using knowledge. It depends upon innovations and new techniques, approaches. A knowledge worker is always developing new creations. It is the responsibility of every knowledge worker to continue doing innovative techniques, developing new approaches and products & services.Knowledge workers manage their work on their own. They are self responsible for the task assigned to them. They should be skillful and must have a creative eye.
The lean management can be applied to knowledge work. However, according to the authors, lean management is difficult to be applied to knowledge work. Lean management is a repeatative approach based on continously imroving the work flow and quality. It is same at most of the levels. However, in knowledge work , one needs to be innovative all the time, creating innovations, developing new techniques.
3. and 4. According to the authors, lean management is somewhere beneficial to the knowledge work as it reduces waste from the systems. It helps in solving problems which eventually, creates smoothness in work quality. It reduces workload, which brings efficiency in work flow. It specifies time and money involved in the process.