Human Relations in a Team - Essay Example

Lean thinking Human relations HR ascertains the prowess to communicate, co-exist in trust and perform as a team with honesty besides other vital virtues while with other staff (Womack & Jones, 1996). Since human being is a social creature, in all aspects of life we all deal with other people, considering it is important to maintain sound relations with colleagues and partners. To perform either way implies one to ensure healthy interactions with co-workers based on diverse associations. Relationship between management and employees are of substantial value in any working environment. Human relation incorporates training of workers, responding to their needs, implementing work place culture and resolving grievances that may rise in working environment. In Any prosperous business or enterprise center of attention are cost reduction, value, competitiveness, and long-term economic sustainability. Employees must frequently work together on tasks, share ideas and get motivation to get things done. Without consistent and inviting work environment culture, challenges arise both in the logistic of managing employees and in the bottom line. Firms with appealing work environment and well-trained staff attract loyalty with customers and are more likely to adapt faster to meet the needs of evolving global market (Womack & Jones, 1996). Human relations encompass excellent and proven business exercise, which is a message that gives appreciation especially in aiding to end the old autocratic managerial approaches quite evident in Japan both before and during the war. Changing to lean entails cultural consideration within workplace, hence implying altering the mode of workers’ thinking in all their operations. A firm’s culture besides other aspects its determinant encompasses the way it accelerates undertaking certain operations as well as and how the management proceeds with changing the entire firm’s culture. Once workers’ thinking undergoes alteration through learning, instructing as well as learning, the will turns to be more open to implementation of appropriate lean techniques. Additionally, the enterprise creates an environment to sustain changes because workers will be willing to execute changes by their own. According to Womack and Jones (1996), human resource involvement is essentials together with teamwork, responsibility and empowerment. Womack and Jones (1996) also contend that the strength of organization lies in the empowerment of the individual. Nevertheless, redistribution of responsibilities is an unavoidable outcome of process production within any successful enterprise. These aspects of human relation enhance cost, quality, service, speed as well as organizational alteration around processes. However, management ought to advocate a balance of intrinsic as well as external motivation. Since, this encompasses one of the most interesting and characteristic element of the system. The energy released from inherent motivations is by far more positive for improving processes and workers, and this in a way their potential and joy of working shines. A win-win environment is crucial to stakeholders, including workers. A cooperative environment has to be preferred by management over a competitive environment. Competition may prompt workers and department to realize respective goals that comprises the key of the entire firm. According to Womack and Jones (1996), the pursuit realizing client satisfaction is internally motivated as well, whereby in any case its achievement cannot be a reality without stakeholder’s needs. Conducive workplace and worker’s participation provide a source of motivation, which is a key feature for productivity. This ensures monetary gains to the firm, as more is achievable in less time with fewer costs. Mostly, employee’s creativity is dependent on their ability to share ideas and communicate with others. In conclusion, it is therefore logical to say human relation is a key aspect of what makes business work. Flow promoting practices and tool Product, information or service consistently flow along value stream without stoppages, interruption, and back flows to ensure a lean production of the final product or service consumed by the customer. Once value definition occurs as well as that for the entire value stream, what follows is to focus on the actual object-the specific design, order and the product itself from beginning to completion. Secondly, company ignores all traditional boundaries of job, careers, and functions to form a lean enterprise removing all impediments to continuous flow of the specific products. The ultimate step is to evaluate specific work tools to do away with backflows and scrap. This is to ensure design, order and fabrication of the specific merchandise proceeds ad infinitum (Womack & Jones, 1996). These three steps emerge as requirements of efficiency that dictate the said flow of production activities through the system. Excellent administration encompasses shunning variance especially in the case that involves running an extremely complex system dealing with varying products. All these activities, which embrace creation, ordering and provision of any goods or any service, can be made to flow. In the event of thinking about ways to line up all of the requirements to get job done into consistent, continuous flow, with no wasted motion, no interruptions, no batches and no queues, it alters everything. How workers work collectively, the kind of tools they design to aid in their work, organizations they create to facilitate the flow, the kind career they pursue, the nature of business firms and their relation to each other. Utilizing flow to full range of human activities will not be easy. For beginners, it is quite a task for most leading to ascertain the flow thus manage to understand its essence. Nevertheless, they do insist that flow principals can be applied in any activity and that the consequences are always dramatic. Indeed, the human power, time, space, tools and new ideas required designing as well as providing given service or product is typically reduced to half very fast. In addition, constant progress is maintained from this point onwards to reduce costs within few years. Product design is a classic batch –and –queue affair in which the marketing department determines the need for a product. Then product engineers then formulate a product to serve the need, a prototype is then build to test the design, tooling department design the tool to make high-volume version of the approved prototype, and finally manufacturing group use tool to fabricate the frame and then assemble the final product. A design for a new product, usually only one of many underdeveloped at a given time, moved from department to department, waiting for queue in each department. In early years, numerous firms switched to heavyweight program managements with a strong team leader and few dedicated team members, but without altering the entire system (Womack & Jones, 1996). The product team was really just committee with staff that sent the great bulk of the actual development work back to the departments, where it still waited in queues. What’s more, there was no effective methodology for carrying designs through the system without lots of rework and backflow. Even worse, no one was responsible for the development efforts obviously, the aggregate volume of orders may increase or decrease over the time and talk time will depend to be adjusted so that production is always precisely synchronized with demand. The point is always to define the talk time accurately within a specified interval in relation demand and to run the whole production sequence precisely to talk time. For production, there was development of higher-speed machine with higher level of automation for tasks ranging from cutting and bending to welding and painting. There was also installation of Assembly lines to assemble a mix of high-volume models in dedicated assembly halls. Just in Time, an innovation pioneered by Toyota, was designed to deal with production problems. This technique was to act a as method for facilitating smooth flow, but JIT can only work effectively if machine changeovers are dramatically slashed so that upstream manufacturing operations produce tiny amount of each part and then produce another tiny amount as soon as the next process downstream summons the amount already produced. In the continuous-flow layout, there is arrangement of productions in a sequence, usually, within a single cell with no buffer. A worse problem was that total lead-time in batch-and-queue systems were usually quite lengthy-typically a few weeks to a few months between the point in time when earliest upstream part was produced and the moment when a product containing parts was shipped to the retailer. This would have been fine if orders had been perfectly smooth, but in fact orders received by the firm changed all the time, partly due to the bonus-driven selling system. Aspects of the transformation in former GM car factor GM car factory closed contending of inferior production coupled with malingering on the side of workers as well as their respective safety as the key reasons for its shutdown, thereafter NUMMI inception of its operation commenced in 1984, which was between GM and Toyota. Teamwork, safety, building high value product at the lowest possible cost to profit the customer were the key priorities. The NUMMI joint venture was extraordinary success. However, transferring the lessons learned throughput the vast General Motors has proved hard work. The key problem is that making the transition from mass production to lean production changes the job of every worker and every manager. What’s more, in the absence of market growth, many jobs undergo elimination. Since GM did not encounter any predicament especially during the 1980s and failed to find opening for growth, it is simply not able to face up to the challenge. At NUMMI, Toyota initiated a game plan derived from respect, teamwork, and trust, as opposed to GM master plan rooted in high-tech solutions over worker enterprise, which eventually orchestrated to distrust and assortment between organization as well as entire labor force. Devising of statutes at NUMMI highlighted “human enhancement” and persistent development on aspects as the solution for endless enhancement and indefinite realization. Constant productivity advancement and value become not only the focus of the new approach but also the task of every employee. Commencing from materials, building block delegation, to shipping, devices and construction, Toyota build a complete system with the essential for prosperity as collaboration. NUMMI’s staff and teams were obliged, inspired to come up with modern methods and suggestions for value, cost upgrade and operation; current method put into action and rewarded. Beginning with the appointment process NUMMI and UAW agents assigned enough time for evaluations, communication and explanation of company’s goals and vision. Example, employee had to go through firm’s policies before appointment. Firm aims for total worthiness was consistently renewed and messages passed on in every occasion. References Womack, J. P & Jones, D. (1996). The machine that changed the world: The story of lean production: Toyotas secret weapon in the global car wars that is revolutionizing world industry. New York, NY. Free Press. Read More