Successful Lean application is conditioned by an evolutionary problem-solving ability of the rank and file.
Such ability is in itself contingent on employee involvement in improvement programs and the implementation of appropriate practices.
At the beginning, the study found that employees do not feel valued when they contribute to the improvement processes
and that 100 per cent of the hourly male employees disagreed that ‘‘The Company considers the employees as the most important asset and will do whatever they can to keep their people’’.