Engaging the Workforce. It’s hard to get employees to commit to Lean when they don’t quite understand it. During the yearly strategic planning session for 2008, Eaton Corporation identified Lean as an opportunity to take the company to the next level through employee engagement, but through feedback, they realized employees did not understand their role in Lean deployment. They first identified the roles and responsibilities for each level of employee.  Then using PDCA boards to harness employee suggestions, and to improve employee communication, 5-minute meetings were launched at the beginning of each shift to focus on what happened the day before, what needed to happen that day and what new ideas had been generated for Continuous Improvement. Finally, they improved the effectiveness of monthly Lean Council meetings by using the PDCA board champions report on the ideas. Implementing these steps transformed the company culture from one where the employees were unclear about Lean, into one able to incorporate employee-driven improvements. .