Which of the following characteristics may indicate a misalignment with lean principles due to organizational structure?

• A. Idle workers
• B. Centralized management control
• C. Mass production
• D. Excess Inventory

Answer: (B)

Lean relies on decision-making being close to the work and teams being empowered to identify and fix problems as they appear. Centralized management control pulls authority up to higher levels, creating delays, bottlenecks, and silos that hinder rapid problem-solving and continuous improvement at the value stream level. When day-to-day decisions about process changes, scheduling, or improvements must wait for distant managers, the flow of work slows, waste increases, and responsiveness to customer needs suffers. This mismatch between where authority sits and where value is created is a clear sign of organizational structure not aligned with lean principles.

Idle workers can indicate workload imbalances or line design issues, but they don’t inherently reveal structural misalignment in authority and decision-making. Mass production reflects a different production philosophy that conflicts with lean flow, but it’s about process design rather than how the organization distributes decision rights. Excess inventory signals problems in flow and pull systems, again more about process control than who holds the decision-making power.