JELA: An Alternative Approach to Industrial Engineering and Management student’s Lean Management Education

Abstract

This paper presents an Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) students’ union, JELA, that was born at University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal. JELA is a junior lean company, with the purpose to provide its members with an opportunity to acquire valuable knowledge and competencies during their graduation in the Lean Management (LM) system, in cooperation with the IEM-UA teachers. The objective of this paper is to explore how JELA and such a kind of students’ union, fully committed to the development of the LM, can contribute to the IEM student’s education and individual learning, and to the integration and development of lean concepts and tools in small and medium companies. To this end, the paper is organized around three specific objectives: (1) to explain how this group emerged and what is its mission; (2) to show how this group contributes to IEM-UA students’ independent learning during their graduation; and (3) to describe this group role in the approximation of IEM-UA students with the labour market.