Equality, Participation, Transition: Essays in Honour of Branko Horvat

110 Employee Involvement and the Modern Firm
maintenance of equipment, time control, quality assurance, developing
suppliers, eliminating waste, empowering workers to make improvements,
skill versatility and cross training, production scheduling, efficiency
control, using information systems, conserving energy and
materials, and technology.
From this list it is obvious that the system ties together practically
everything which the productivity consultants have identified as
important for increasing efficiency of production. This system stresses
that long lasting improvements cannot be achieved by concentrating
only on parts of the areas listed. Improvements in these areas support
each other, and the movement to higher levels of achievement in any
of these areas requires simultaneous improvement in all others.
This is, however, impossible to achieve without the total involvement
of everyone in the organization, from the janitor to the top level
of management. This further requires detailed information on the
operation of the enterprise both at the strategic and the process level.
This program, if consistently implemented, leads to a coherent workers’
collective where improvements are both performance oriented and
people oriented. This means that the improvement of working conditions,
interpersonal relationships, safety, personal development (people
oriented improvement) is as important as the achievement of lower
cost, better quality and faster delivery to customers (performance oriented
improvements). Complex systems of performance improvement
like this one cannot function at all without achieving full employee
participation in team-based improvement activities.
The 20 Keys system, when firmly adopted in an enterprise, creates a
long lasting environment. That is beneficial for everyone. Employees at
all levels recognize their interdependence and work together towards
common goals. Frequently, the employees in companies that successfully
implement these systems develop after-work activities where
employees get to know each other better and thus further boost the
cooperative spirit in the work place.
In coping with the problem of how to acquire the know-how for the
implementation of 20 Keys, enterprises developed inter-firm relations
previously unknown to them. In spite of the self-management system,
which theoretically promotes cooperation, the companies viewed each
other as competitors, competing for domestic customers. Each company
produced similar wood products because of the low product specialization
in the industry. As a result, the doors of the factories were
firmly closed to each other and there was no cooperation established
along the production chain.