Will Slow the Lean Effort

As an organization proceeds with ‘leaning’ its’ internal systems (both on the operations side and the support side), it will soon run into constraints which will slow the lean effort. And while some of these constraints are internal (and can be overcome), some will be external, in the supply chain.

These constraints normally take the following forms:

• Poor quality products (products which have significant variation)
• Products don’t meet specifications (substitute products don’t conform to requirements)
• Poor service/delivery levels (resulting in critical product shortages)
• Delivery of product in unnecessarily large batch quantities
• Poor marking of products/packaging (resulting in poor internal delivery of product to production lines)
• Internal company processes contain significant overhead in the ordering/purchasing cycle