The paradox of hyper-bureaucracy and lean in high-tech manufacturing

Lean is supposed to be waste-less, simple and non-bureaucratic. Practice shows that it is not. This paper draws on insight from two manufacturing companies in the aerospace industry, to argue that the pursuit to be lean in modern high-tech industry conflicts with core lean design principles. The attempt to simultaneously be high-tech and try to become lean results in an unintended hyper-bureaucracy, hindering both effective use of technology in place and efficient implementation of lean.