Lean and Sustainable Continuous Improvement: Assessment of People Potential Contribution

Many industries all over the world have been increasingly adopting Lean Management practices, from manufacturing to service sectors. Notwithstanding the demonstrated astonishing benefits in operational performance of Lean, many firms strive to successfully sustain Lean and its gains in the long-term. Many authors in the literature relate these failures to an exasperate effort to correctly implement the so called “practices” of Lean. This excessive focus on practical aspects led companies to completely neglect the human side of developing people in order to create a base for sustainable continuous improvement system that Lean implementation entails. For that reasons, increasing attention has been placed by academic researchers towards the importance of the human side in successfully sustaining Lean implementation and Continuous Improvement Programs. Despite this increased attention, only few studies have tried to analyze this aspect from a broader and comprehensive perspective. Indeed, before the contribution of this dissertation, no studies in the literature have been able to identify a comprehensive model for assessing the development of people’s potential to contribute at the sustainable continuous improvement. This paper represents a preliminary research attempting to fill this gap, proposing a new assessment model for monitoring people development.