From successful to sustainable Lean production – the case of a Lean Prize Award Winner

Figures & data

Table 1. Key principles of complexity theories applied to organisations.

Edge of chaos	Managers promote bringing their organisations to the state between order and disorder to make them the most creative and open to change (Frederick, 1998)
Self-organisation	Complex systems tend to exhibit ‘self-organizing’ behaviour: starting in a random state, they usually evolve toward order instead of disorder (Anderson, 1999)
Non-linearity	Complex systems are constantly changing, where the laws of cause and effect appear not to apply (Burnes, 2005). Managers can only roughly foresee what behaviours will emerge when some elements are changed (Anderson, 1999).
Agents and interconnections	Complex systems consist of agents that interact with each other and demonstrate certain behaviours according to order-generating rules (Anderson, 1999)
Order-generating rules	In achieving effective change, order-generating rules have the potential to overcome the limitations of rational, linear, top-down, strategy-driven approaches (Burnes, 2005; Styhre, 2002)

Figure 1. Timeline of the study.

Table 2. Overview of the data collection in 2009, 2011, 2015.

	Interviews (n = 24)	Observations	Other data collection methods
2009	n = 12 6 operators, 4 first-line managers, 1 production manager, 1 factory manager	n = 6 daily stand-up meetings, improvement meetings	Documents studies: strategy documents, implementation plans, historical meeting minutes, performance reports
2011	n = 6 2 operators, 2 first-line managers, 1 production manager, 1 factory manager	n= 20 daily stand-up meetings, improvement meetings, project meetings, management meetings	Shadowing managers: 4 managers were shadowed during 2 days Documents studies: strategy documents and performance reports
2015	n = 6 3 operators, 2 first-line managers, 1 production manager	n = 8 daily stand-up meetings, improvement meetings	Documents studies: strategy documents and performance reports

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