Are lean production jobs intrinsically motivating? More than 20 years after the arrival of lean production, this question remains unresolved. Generally accepted models of job design such as the Job Characteristics Model (JCM, (Hackman, J.R., Oldham, G.R. 1976. Motivation through the design of work: test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16, 250-279.)) cannot explain the occurrence of worker intrinsic motivation in the context of lean production. In this paper, we extend the JCM to the lean production context to explain the theoretical relationship between job characteristics and motivational outcomes in lean production. We suggest that a configuration of lean production practices is more important for worker intrinsic motivation than are independent main effects, and that motivation may be limited by excessive leanness. We conclude that lean production job design may engender worker intrinsic motivation; however, there are likely to be substantial differences in intrinsic motivation under differing lean production configurations. # 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.

To improve demand chain performance, is it better for parties in a supply chain to focus first on lead time reduction, or instead concentrate on improving the transfer of demand information upstream in the chain? Even though the theory of supply and demand chain management suggests that lead time reduction is an antecedent to the use of market mediation (i.e., adjusting production to fit actual customer demand as it materializes) [Harvard Business Rev. 75 (2) (1997) 105] to reduce transaction uncertainty in the chain, which can be conceptualized as the primary goal of supply chain management [J. Operat. Manage. 11 (3) (1993) 289], demand chain parties often are observed in practice to begin with information transfer improvement, ignoring the problem of long lead times. In this paper, we propose a framework for prioritizing lead time reduction in a demand chain improvement project, using a typology of demand chains to identify and recommend trajectories to achieve desirable levels of market mediation performance.

a b s t r a c tWhen do short lead times warrant a cost premium? Decision makers generally agree that short lead times enhance competitiveness, but have struggled to quantify their benefits. Blackburn (2012) argued that the marginal value of time is low when demand is predictable and salvage values are high. de Treville et al. (2014) used real-options theory to quantify the relationship between mismatch cost and demand volatility, demonstrating that the marginal value of time increases with demand volatility, and with the volatility of demand volatility. We use the de Treville et al. model to explore the marginal value of time in three industrial supply chains facing relatively low demand volatility, extending the model to incorporate factors such as tender-loss risk, demand clustering in an order-up-to model, and use of a target fill rate that exceeded the newsvendor profit-maximizing order quantity. Each of these factors substantially increases the marginal value of time. In all of the companies under study, managers had underestimated the mismatch costs arising from lead time, so had underinvested in cutting lead times.

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