Grouping and Empowerment of Employees
Another major structural difference between JIT and traditional organizations related to the grouping and responsibilities of employees. As just indicated, each call is viewed as a minifactory. Thus, each call requires easy and quick access to support services, which means that centralized service departments must be scaled down and their personnel reassigned to work directly with manufacturing cells. Consequently, service personnel, such as manufacturing and quality engineers, are often assigned to cells.
Training cell workers to perform multiple tasks also has the effect relocating support services to the call. In addition to direct production work, call workers may perform setup duties, move partially completed goods form station to station within the call, perform preventive maintenance and minor repairs, conduct quality inspections, and perform janitorial tasks. This multiple-task capability is directly related to the pull-through production approach. Producing on demand means that production workers (formerly direct laborers) may often have “free” time. This nonproduction time can be used to perform selected support activities.
Cell worker are also given a greater degree of participation in the management of the organization. Workers input is sought and used to improve production processes. Workers at Saturn and Southwest Airlines and other JIT organizations are often involved in interviewing and hiring other employees, sometimes even including prospective bosses. The reason? If the “chemistry is right,” then the workforce will be more efficient and will work together better. Managers act more as facilitators than as supervisors.