The other day I heard a piece on NPR about American Airlines involving their mechanics in making decisions about how to run a maintenance facility.

At first, [VP Carmine J.] Romano was wary of the idea that the only way to avoid bankruptcy was to start sharing his power with his union workers. But a deal was worked out. The 6,000 mechanics in Tulsa agreed to a significant cut in salary, benefits, and vacation. In exchange, the workers would have equal input in running the operation. Two years into it, the veteran company vice president is a true believer.

What was a dysfunctional relationship between management and the union has become a very collaborative one and brought the facility back from the verge of bankruptcy. To stay competitive, the airline needed to cut the time it took to do a major overhaul in half. The mechanics went to work and completely redesigned the way their work was organized.

This reminds me of Mary Poppendieck’s thoughts on Lean Programming – a term she coined after applying the principles of Lean Manufacturing to software development. Especially relevant to this story is Lean Rule #5: Empower Workers (Decide as Low as Possible)*:

A basic principle of Lean Manufacturing is to drive decisions down to the lowest possible level, providing both the tools and the authority for people “on the floor” to make decisions.

The thought is that those closest to the real work are in the best position to make decisions because they are the ones with the most information and they fully understand the implications of all the tradeoffs involved.

The idea of empowering workers to make decisions helped Toyota improve quality and productivity at a GM manufacturing plant. For American Airlines, it helped to involve workers in a plan to improve productivity at a maintenance facility, which reduced time and cost, while increasing quality. In addition, it saved the plant from having it’s work outsourced to South America and instead turned it into a profit center for the airline – in fact, airlines from South America are now flying planes to the US for maintenance at this facility. By sharing decision-making with workers, management was able to win concessions from the unions, which was also a big factor in saving the facility. Though people were initially skeptical of the plan, this agreement has turned out to be a win-win for both the union workers and American Airlines.

Hearing the story on the way home, I thought it was a brilliant move by the airline – and really smart for the workers to accept the plan as well. What really struck me was that management was willing to release full top-down control. It’s one of those things that makes a lot of sense to me – if you have competent employees, let them do what they know how to do.

_{* Apologies for the lack of a direct link, but there are no html anchors in the article.}