Lean production and quality of working life on the shop floor: the experience of British and Italian car workers

In this chapter, we present survey data of different dimensions of employee experience of life on the lean production line in three European car plants. Our core research question is to interrogate the central employee-centred claim of the original IMVP researchers. That is, lean manufacturing offers something better for workers (compared to the rigours of Fordist/Taylorist production systems) in that the ‘working smarter’ mantra encapsulates a process that provides the space and management techniques to establish more participative (and less stressful) work environments: While the mass-production plant is often filled with mind-numbing stress, as workers struggle to assemble unmanufacturable products and have no way to improve their working environment, lean production offers a creative tension in which workers have many ways to address challenges. This creative tension involved in solving complex problems is precisely what has separated manual factory work from professional “think” work in the age of mass production’ (Womack et al.. 1990: 101).

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