Outstanding strategic, operational, financial and market position gains have been achieved by companies that have embedded the Lean philosophy, principals, practices, tools and methods into their business; however, the objectives and goals of the Lean Enterprise cannot be realized solely from within the business. Certain specific major gains require a business to migrate Lean beyond their four walls and into their Extended Enterprises.
The Lean Enterprise Platform plays an enabling role in this process to optimize the flow of products and services from concept design through point of use, taking into consideration both internal and external players in a Lean Supply Chain.
This approach involves additional skills and techniques from traditional supplier and customer relationship management. In particular, it requires that business managers learn to see the value stream as the sequence of value creating steps required to generate demand, develop new products and services, and fulfill customer needs while learning to remove the waste, mistakes, and rigidities from the supply chain. Instead of simply allowing the market grind on the suppliers and their customers, Lean business professionals focus relentlessly on improving the value creating process to insure successful outcomes for all participants in the extended enterprise.
Guided by our experts, we link the enterprise objectives with both customers’ and suppliers’ action plans necessary to achieve “breakthrough” objectives through Strategy Deployment. Lean Supply Chain managers will challenge all assumptions about the status quo regarding pricing, quality, delivery, and flexibility levels offered by the current suppliers. The client through the eyes of their customers examines these key performance dimensions. Suppliers and all members of the extended enterprise work to create win-win relationships and linkage within a Lean and stable supply base by focusing on the shared value creation process that flows from the supplier, through the enterprise and into the customer and or end customer.
A transformation to Lean ultimately means examining every extended enterprise process, subjecting the enterprise to a Value Stream Analysis, standardizing this revised process, and embedding it into the various customer, supplier and value creation activities that represent the work of the organization and its functions.