Which of the following is a characteristic of lean manufacturing that may not align with its principles?

• A. Idle workers
• B. Centralized management control
• C. Mass production
• D. Highly Specialized Workforce

Answer: (D)

Lean manufacturing centers on flexible, cross-trained teams that can quickly adapt to changing demand and solve problems at the source. A highly specialized workforce undermines this by locking people into narrow tasks, reducing the ability to balance workload, perform rapid changeovers, and participate in continuous improvement. With lean, workers are expected to be multi-skilled and able to move between tasks, support line stops for quality, and contribute to problem-solving in real time. In contrast, a highly specialized setup creates bottlenecks when a specific skill is needed or unavailable, making the pull and flow systems less responsive.

Other options reflect waste or misalignment with lean: idle workers indicate wasted capacity, centralized management control undercuts frontline empowerment and rapid decision-making, and mass production promotes large batches and long setup times that lean seeks to minimize.