Strategies to Run a Lean Supply Chain: How Principles of Lean Manufacturing Transfer Benefits to Operations

Jan 23, 2009 in Industrial & Manufacturing

Explore the process of lean manufacturing and how it can be applied to supply chain management.
In the last several years, the manufacturing sector has moved from vertically organized structures to horizontal organizations; that is, a single company no longer controls its product from, let’s say, the mine to the store shelf. Instead, today’s companies control only pieces of the supply chain, and the companies and divisions controlling those various components may be located just about anywhere in the world.

This model enables companies to concentrate on what they do best, but as a result the supply chain has become longer and more complex. The blurring of the line between manufacturing and supply chain logistics provides the opportunity to move efficient manufacturing management concepts to supply chain management. One manufacturing concept stands out as most successful: the concept of lean.

This white paper was written by Ventana Research, Sponsored by Epicor Software.