Lean Supply Chain Management

Outstanding operational gains have been achieved by companies that embedded lean into their business; however, achieving the objectives and goals of the organization cannot be realized from within the four-walls of the business.

Certain specific major gains require a business to aggressively migrate their programs beyond their four-walls and into their extended supply chain partners including their customers.

Supply chain execution plays a critical role in optimizing the flow of products and services from concept, design and to the point-of-use, taking into consideration both internal and external processes within an organization’s supply chain. This approach involves additional skills and techniques from traditional Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In particular, it requires that business managers learn to see the entire, end-to-end value stream and the sequence of value creation steps required to generate demand, develop new products and services, and fulfill customer needs while learning to remove waste, mistakes, and rigidities from supply chain processes.

We will work with you to link enterprise performance objectives with both customer’s and supplier’s action plans necessary to achieve "breakthrough performance" results. Supply chain managers will challenge all assumptions about the status quo regarding pricing, quality, delivery, and flexibility levels offered by current suppliers and customers. 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 by focusing on the shared value creation process that flows from the supplier, through the enterprise and into the customer and or an end user.

LEAN SUPPLIER DEVELOPMENT

There is a need for the enterprise to take a strategic and systematic approach to improve supplier performance, rather than engaging on a tactical, short-term and purchase-to-purchase basis. Supplier development is based on engaging the right suppliers, with the right capabilities and willingness to align operational objectives. Supplier performance assessments are a means for gauging the capability and capacity of the supplier to meet the client's business and operational requirements.

Supplier assessments should take place before developing a long-term strategic relationship. They are a valuable tool to assess at an early stage whether or not supplier development is feasible and determine which suppliers can deliver the necessary process improvements. The key aim of assessment is to encourage the right suppliers with the right structure to coordinate their efforts with yours.

A solid Supplier Development Strategy is built by defining the key process and sets the criteria against which suppliers will be assessed.  It provides the concrete link between the aims and priorities of the client as a whole and their suppliers and is therefore vital to business process transformation with the right suppliers being chosen for long-term relationships.