Systemic Lean Intervention: Enhancing Lean with Community Operational Research

This paper explores how theory and methodology from Community Operational Research (Community OR) can enhance Lean initiatives. We are driven by the paucity of the literature discussing the involvement of non-obvious stakeholders, particularly local communities, in the adoption of Lean. We present a project undertaken with a food production company in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, where we employed a Systemic Intervention methodology to integrate theory and methods from Community OR with those from Lean. Based on this example, we argue that the inclusion of community representatives is necessary if Lean waste-reduction initiatives are to benefit both organizations and their local communities. Our only proviso is that, in the spirit of Community OR, the involvement of community representatives must be meaningful, so change is agreed through stakeholder engagements that respect their inputs and framings, and do not result in organizations imposing unwanted 'solutions' on communities. The paper ends with some reflections on the added value that Community OR can offer Lean practitioners.