White Paper: Strategies To Run a Lean Supply Chain

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. Today's supply chain includes the entire flow of product, starting with raw materials and ending at the retail outlet; it is the largest business process a company has to manage. In addition to its length, the chain has become enmeshed with production processes to the point where the line dividing manufacturing from supply chain logistics has blurred.

Both of those consequences have caused companies to try to make their supply chains more efficient. Fortunately, the blurring of the line between manufacturing and supply chain logistics brings with it the opportunity to move the management concepts that produce efficient manufacturing to supply chain management. One efficient manufacturing concept stands out as most successful: the concept of "lean."