Don’t Replace the Workforce, Reimagine It: The Promise of AI
By Caroline Lewis
If AI gave your workforce 20-40% more capacity, what would you do with it?
That is the question Ingka Group, IKEA’s largest retailer and franchisee, faced in 2021 when the company adopted an AI chatbot to handle routine customer questions. Rather than responding to the AI-driven changes in customer service with layoffs, IKEA chose to upskill around 8,500 call-center employees into higher-value activities such as remote interior design, digital retail sales, relationship building, and complex customer problem-solving. By 2023, IKEA had created a new source of revenue from its remote interior design and sales operation. By 2026, this new operation had seen sales grow 15–20% annually over the previous three years.
From a Lean practitioner’s perspective, IKEA’s story offers a glimpse into how AI adoption could play out within a Lean Management System.
AI creates capacity; the Lean system determines what we do with it.
In a Lean system, standardization of routine work provides the foundation for learning and improvement. When routine tasks are standardized, problems or abnormalities are more easily detected and investigated for improvement. With every repetition, workers look for ways to eliminate, simplify, or combine tasks to improve the speed and quality of their work. Now, we have another improvement option: automating the routine tasks. This could be on a large scale like IKEA automating responses to common customer questions about store hours, shipment updates, or checking product availability; or, on a smaller scale, this could give an hour back to superintendents every week by automating personnel scheduling. On the shop floor, AI assistants can search manuals, past failures, and troubleshooting history, giving technicians more time diagnosing and fixing equipment rather than searching for information.
At any level, AI, just like traditional improvement tools, can free up a company’s most valuable resource: people’s time. But creating capacity is only the first step. The real question is what we do with that capacity.
AI can improve the work and develop the worker.
The Lean approach also informs us on what to do with this extra time. Toyota expresses a foundational principle of its manufacturing philosophy as “Monozukuri is Hitozukuri” (making things is also about developing people). With or without AI, Lean systems are not only constantly improving their processes but also their people. When technology removes routine work, personnel can be further developed into higher-value work, process improvement efforts, or problem solving that also requires a human touch. How do we decide which direction to take the extra capacity? The answer is also within the Lean Management System. We must first understand the Voice of the Customer or Voice of the Business.
The Voice of the Customer drives value.
If your customer demand is higher than your current capacity, the extra capacity could mean more production or customers serviced with the same amount of people and time. If your customers are asking for a new product, service, or capability, the extra capacity could mean a new revenue stream. This was the case with IKEA. The company started getting customer service calls asking for help planning their spaces. IKEA recognized this emerging demand and responded by upskilling some of its employees to provide remote interior design services.
For some operations, the time created by AI may simply provide additional capacity for process improvement efforts that help keep costs competitive. The direction could come either from internal customers like management or external customers who choose your product or service primarily based on price. The important point is that AI inherently does not automatically create value just because it creates capacity. If AI gives an employee an hour back each week and that hour is simply filled with more mundane tasks, very little has changed. But if that hour is spent at Gemba (Waste Walk), coaching a frontline lead, solving a recurring problem, or improving a process, the organization has converted AI-created capacity into additional value. The same principle applies whether the capacity is created for a superintendent, technician, engineer, operator, or customer service representative. The opportunity is not simply to create more time, but to determine how that time can be used to create greater value for the customer and the business.
What higher-value work can we give to our people?
At the end of the day, introducing AI into the workforce should not begin with the question, “How many people can AI replace?” It should begin with, “What higher-value work can we give our people when AI removes the repetitive work?” Through a Lean Six Sigma lens, AI is another tool for improving efficiency, quality, and process performance. But the greater opportunity lies in how organizations use the capacity AI creates: developing people, solving problems, responding more effectively to customer needs, and creating greater value.
AI does not determine the outcome on its own. Like any modern technology, its impact ultimately depends on the management system, leadership, and processes surrounding it.
