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Team Network Evolution While Undergoing a Lean Transformation: A Missing Success Indicator?

The Lean paradigm for production process management and improvement can be considered a benchmark for managing operations in many areas, from manufacturing to software development. Several studies found factors for the success or failure of Lean implementations, but these factors are aggregated or company-level and do not capture the nuances of teamwork at the shop floor level. In this paper it is contended that as companies embark along a lean transformation their work teams undergo a change in their collaboration patterns, and the degree of such transformation indicates and is correlated to how successful the implementation of Lean has been for that particular team. After developing propositions based on literature and practical experience, three hypotheses are tested with a small sample of work teams at an industrial company implementing Lean. Results support that as companies become Lean, there is an increase in communication among workers of a team, among different teams and between teams and management. These changes are more pronounced in more successful work teams. The conclusions may be helpful to understand a lean transformation as a communication network transformation, and hence open the game to improving the odds of a successful lean implementation by facilitating communication rather than by insisting in technical or tool-based skills.