mercredi 6 avril 2011

The Importance Of Lean Consulting SC

By Marisa Watson


You see the word lean everywhere you look. It will be seen in the gym, in the grocery store and even in the business world. With a recession in place, lean may be the way to go with your business. You may not be able to achieve lean status on your own, though. You may have to obtain some outside lean consulting SC.

You must first figure out how to define your supply chain. Your supply chain in a nutshell is fulfilling an order from the time it is place until it is in the customers hands. Even after it is in the customers hands, you must provide excellent customer service. Your supply chain involves many components. I will go into them in the following paragraphs.

Consulting will help you look at everything from Production and Forecasting, to inventory. Your production processes may need some evaluation. If you have inefficiencies it may delay a product, as well as sacrifice quality. Forecasting will tie directly into the production process. Inaccurate forecasting can lead to under producing, or overproducing. If demand is too high for your production rate, it will lead to a bullwhip effect. Consultants will look at your forecasting processes and determine how accurately they are.

When you think of lean you think of something that is efficient without a lot of bells and whistles. That is how the supply chain should be. You should not have more inventory than you need. Controlling inventory is crucial due to holding costs and a higher inventory will prohibit production. The way you handle inventory will determine if your chain is a push or pull system.

If you were to obtain outside consulting, this would be one of the main things they look at. There is an easy way to determine whether or not your system is a push or pull system. Take a look at how you process orders. If you have a large on hand inventory, such as a retail store or grocery store, you pull the orders to get them into the customers hands. If you have a push system, you probably have a small inventory and you push the order through the chain to get it into the hands.

You need to determine where you can cut costs in your inventory, and maybe as well as in your manufacturing process. If your transportation network can be simplified to reduce costs, by all means you must do this. The theory of lean supply chain comes from the Just-in-Time theory introduced by Japanese Supply Chain experts. Lean means reduce as low as you possibly can.

As you can see, lean consulting in supply chain is a handy tool. A consultant may be able to pick things up about your processes and on hand inventory that you may not see. When trying to reduce an extra set of eyes is always necessary. You cannot just pick certain things and throw them out the window. There are many other factors to consider that you may not pick up but many others may.

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