https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/efficiency-what-efficiency/ Lean Production | Lean Manufacturing | LEI | Lean Services Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:09:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/efficiency-what-efficiency/#comment-351749 Fri, 08 Aug 2025 20:03:54 +0000 https://www.lean.org/?p=42572#comment-351749 At my first job as an engineer, I worked for a company that paid all of our operators on piecework, and we were obsessed with ‘efficiency.” They were measured by performance against a standard, and we prided ourselves that most of our operators were in the range of 120-140%. My job was to improve that efficiency. Meanwhile all around us was WIP and FG inventory, and our lead time was over 30 days for a product that had 10 minutes of labor.
As I advanced in the business and learned more about that JIT thing, I began to realize that we were very efficiently making the wrong product at the wrong time and had the consolation of knowing that our excess, obsolete inventory was produced at the lowest cost.
Overcoming the piecework culture was our biggest challenge in transitioning to a lean operation. To improve flexibility we reduced the number of job classes, but since our operators’ “efficiency” declined, we increased the wages, a wise decision due to the value of increased flexibility.’ To reduce WIP and lead time, we put together one piece flow cells and paid the team, rather than individual, by piecework. We could never completely overcome that “piecework” culture.
After that adventure, I did some consulting and teaching at a local tech college, and I make it a policy to ban that “E” word and shudder whenever I hear that word.

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