When Lean Manufacturing Cannot Cut Jobs, How About Paper?
An article published in the Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2009, by Timothy Aeppel and Justin Lahart, discuss how lean companies are finding it difficult to contain costs. These organizations adopted lean manufacturing techniques and business processes during the more affluent times. Now that demand is falling for products, yet their costs keep rising, these companies are finding it harder to find areas to cut. As stated in the article: “‘When you get down to where we are now, where manufacturing is less than 10% of the employed population, there just isn’t that much more you can cut,’ says Kurt Karl, chief U.S. economist at Swiss Re.” Wall Street Journal, “Lean Factories Find It Hard to Cut Jobs Even in a Slump”. 9 March 2009 One area I would ask these companies, if they have not already done so, is look at how they are managing their manufacturing and business processes outside of the people they employ, towards the paper it is written on. How much is being spent to run work instructi
