Labor or human resources are very much a part of the value chain of a manufacturing firm which, in itself, is composed of many diverse, yet complementary, components. A manufacturing firm working on a production schedule and towards a given output will have to rely heavily on its employees. However, having a ‘common platform of participation is not sufficient for proper bonding of the membership.’
The systems view in employee relations present in a manufacturing firm cannot take the problem or the solution out of the context of production. In other words, the case of an erring worker is not simply a case of error. Contextually in systems thinking, the erring worker is only a part of a weak system. The manager who promptly lays all the blame on the erring worker is missing a vital opportunity to inspect a larger backdrop that is potentially erroneous, as well. The erring worker may have had problems with his co-workers, the system he is working in, or his tools of production.
A manufacturing firm is a complex system even if it exists on a rather linear sequence. Employee relations can cause a ripple effect in this sequence. If managers or superiors employ systems thinking, they will readily grasp the idea that this ripple effect can change the entire system, eventually producing a different result.
If something goes wrong, a systems view of the scenario will have the employer thinking that something is wrong with the system, not just the employee. And, in fact, the error in the system may have caused the employee to commit the error that he did. The end result, if seen through the linear sequence of work that is characteristic of a manufacturing firm, is high productivity and on-time performance.
While lean manufacturing systems employ standards of production, the fact remains that it is people who run the production.
