Question

Does lean management ignore some perspectives of organizational effectiveness? if so, what are the unintended consequences of these practices that might undermine rather than improvethe organization's effectiveness?

Answer 1

I experienced lean management at a very large open pit mining operation in the 1980's and 1990's. Part of it was a new theoretically streamlined system for purchase orders. Prior to this introduction, the technical people only had to briefly fill out a hand written form and send it to purchasing where they completed the final form. After the JD Edwards system was introduced, then the entire onus was on the technical person to complete the whole order in its' final form so this resulted in added stress to us and meant more time in the office and less on important field duties.. 

Also,since we had a skeleton crew in mine engineering, I (we) had to do multiple projects which only allowed us to touch lightly on each one and therefore compromise the quality of the work. As primarily a field man, I would need to both plan the work and also carry it out myself in the field and sometimes it was difficult to do both,