LEAN LEARNING OF LEAN PRODUCTION

Abstract

The world has changed rapidly, today those companies benefit more that keep pace with the changes taking place, that increase their efficiency. Now there is a change in economic structures [1], the traditional mass production is giving way to a lean, more efficient, active and flexible in terms of consumer demand.

When creating the concept of practical training for production system of JSC «Russian Railways’ a question arose what could be its foundation. Attempts to subordinate task of staff training in large companies to the interests of lean production (flexible in responding to market demand) do not always lead to success. This is confirmed, in particular, by data, cited in the article, collected from surveys of executives of the holding structures, which are held at the Corporate University of JSC «Russian Railways», as well as by the analysis of the experience of foreign companies and enterprises.

The general opinion of experts, the adopted approaches of the classical corporate training does not always meet the conditions of the time, it is necessary to look for new ways of knowledge transfer. The dynamics of the globalizing market is so high that the classical training system is not keeping pace with ongoing reforms, as traditional training is focused mainly on the transfer of knowledge, rather than on the audience involvement. They can hardly serve as an ideological influence on the audience, change their mindsets, train leaders. This contradicts the very idea of improving the production system.

The article the way how a new system of corporate training adapted to the interests and ideology of lean production was implemented. The article contains detailed review of approaches of lean production itself as well as authors’ conceptual approaches to the creation of a «system of lean learning», serving the needs of the lean production. The objective of the authors was to analyze advantages and disadvantages of lean learning system, using experience of the large foreign and Russian companies. Adaptation and debugging of learning processes, perhaps, are the most difficult issues in the practical application of the concept of lean production, and it is understandable. The development is impossible without a change of thinking, and it is also to be done, if the educational goals become such a comprehensive and responsible vector.