Abstract:
As we all know, today, the concept o f productivity had become the major
theme in the private sector organizations as well as in the public sector
organizations in Sri Lanka. The reason behind o f it was that Sri Lankan
Government had announced the period o f 1997-2006 as the productivity
decade. Even though this productivity concept is not new, the country like
Japan brought new fife to this concept. After the 2nd world war, Japan had
taken many steps to rebuild their economy, industries, and living conditions o f
their people. In this effort the Japanese specialist understood that, because o f
limited reso urces and culture differences they could not develop with the
American styles o f management The Japanese specialists tried to find better
methods, which were suitable to their country. In this they attempt they gave
more emphasis on better utilization o f all resources including the human
resources as well. They understood that in improving productivity it, might be
used workers hand as well as workers heads other than in America, other wise
they could not develop their country. As a result o f these efforts they
introduced workers based techniques to improve the productivity such as
kaizen, 5s method, work improvement teams etc. In Sri Lankan context even
though we have sufficient human resources the problem we face is lack o f
enough people with the needed creative and innovative abilities. However,
today we can see the Sri Lankan organization had given more emphasis on
improving productivity by applying such Japanese techniques. By introducing
the concepts like kaizen, 5s method, and work improvement teams in to their
organizations, both private sector and public sector and public sector
organizations were able to achieve better results. However, the problem faced
by the most Sri Lankan organizations is that they had failed keep the
betterment continually and improve It further.
