Lean management, group support systems, and hypermedia: a combination whose time has come

The TeamGlobal team support system (TSS) is implemented in a multimedia product, HyperNet, for users with workstations linked world-wide over INTERNET. The use of object-oriented technology coupled with the HyperNet communications environment enables these TSSs to span varied platforms without apparent restraint upon the users. The interactive richness of the resulting class of TSS opens many opportunities for extending applied research and selected actual applications in useful ways. The present study demonstrates that information technology can now support an organization which chooses to move into the practices of lean management, and that this support is practical for selected organizations regardless of how distributed their human resources may be and what assortment of computing platforms may be involved