Leadership and organizational model for innovative, efficient and socially sustainable production teams

Important results from the project

Broadened competence and involvement have led to individual learning and increased understanding, which in turn enhanced self-confidence, motivation, and individual development as well as created new career paths among operators. Specialist operators have deepened their knowledge and taken over work tasks, freeing up time for support functions and team leaders. Increased operator empowerment has positively affected the work environment of production teams.

Expected long term effects

It is crucial for production organisations to have the ability to innovate and continuously improve, which requires a learning culture. Further, I 4.0 enables quick decision-making on the shop floor, but requires multi-skilled and technically specialised operators with complementary skills in each production team. The LOOP organisational model help to create autonomous production teams with breadth and depth of competence, as well as to facilitate organisational learning.

Approach and implementation

In the first phase , a qualitative and quantitative analysis was carried out. Results formed the base of the intervention, and a contextual adaptation of the LOOP model was carried out during three workshops as well as a two-day leadership training. Two implementation strategies were used, one focused on breadth and focused on depth of competence. Researchers followed the intervention with coordination, joint reflections, and learning. Finaly, the intervention pilot tests were evaluated.