Question

The General Manager for your company is upset at what she perceives as waste in the system. The facility seems disorganized, employees fluctuate between working extremely hard at certain times, and standing around at other times. You decide to take a bold step and lay out the principles of lean methodology. Describe to the GM the components of a lean supply chain, what is the philosophy, what does it try to achieve, what are some specific lean tools that could be incorporated

Answer 1

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

I would explain to the manager the principles of lean methodology in the following way.

If you want to eliminate non-value activities, the waste in the system, the disorganization is the facility, and laziness in the company, you have to establish a lean methodology as soon as possible.

This methodology has four stages.

Stage number one is Procurement. In this stage, you identify and eliminate duplications or double procedures in the same department. The second stage is Manufacturing. In this stage, the company pays attention to the quality of the process and the products. The goal is to prevent any defects in the products and diminish the return of products.

The third stage is Warehousing. In this stage, management focuses on keeping low inventories in the warehouse and improve the control of goods. Finally, the fourth stage, Transportation. The goal of this stage is to efficient the shipment of different goods to be transported in one trip to many differente places.