Lean Supply Chain

Our approach to supply chain management encompasses everything from product and network design to execution of delivery. Your organization will drive performance and improve customer satisfaction while managing increasing complexity.

Lean Horizons’ educational services and customizable templates for scheduling processes offer a turnkey solution to a true, closed-loop pull manufacturing system triggered by customer demand. Through heijunka, or demand-driven level pull scheduling, your company eliminates unpredictable, volatile schedules and optimizes the deployment of materials, human resources and operations.

By integrating cost, market intelligence and customer requirements with your own personal Lean profile, aggressive manufacturers transform Lean into an effective supplier selection filter through which candidates must pass in order to be considered for integration. Most importantly, the deployment of Lean as a filter allows forward-thinking manufacturers to develop total delivered cost models, that reflect current-state supplier operational capabilities, and lower-cost future-state models developed through the migration of Lean disciplines upstream in the supply chain.

The goal is to create and sustain a single, seamless delivery value stream from the supplier downstream to the end customer. Experienced Lean practitioners can facilitate the integration process by architecting the future-state value stream map during the selection process, using it to help select the best supplier with the lowest integration costs and most robust service capabilities.

Considering the obstacles that can impair seamless delivery such as communications issues, order management, demand planning connectivity and the often-painful conversion from batch deliveries to one-piece flow concepts, developing an appropriate value stream integration plan is mission-critical to avoid service disruptions or delivered-cost spikes. Lean Horizons provides real-world experience when guiding manufacturers in the design of highly profitable integration plans that are open, accurate and complete, and tied to contractual language clearly outlining buyer and supplier responsibilities for integrating each separate value stream.

By conducting structured Lean distribution assessments, we help your organization determine optimal footprints and infrastructure as well as perfect inventory management strategy and practices.