10/26/15
David M. Powe
What would it mean to your business if you could improve lead times by 40%? One way to answer that is to ask yourself what it would me to you if your suppliers could reduce their lead time by 40%? A faster supply chain makes any business more responsive to its customers which almost always improves market share.
But can I really get a big improvement in lead time without sacrificing on cost inventory and quality? Nike did! Using a lean manufacturing approach, they reported improvements in lead time, productivity, quality and new product introduction.
Here’s a summary of their performance report from an article by Supply Management:
“The report said contracted factories which adopted the lean approach showed defect rates 50 per cent lower than those that didn’t. It also revealed delivery lead times from lean factories were, on average, 40 per cent quicker. Productivity increases of 10 to 20 per cent and a reduction in the time taken to introduce a new model by 30 per cent were also reported from lean factories.”
Nike reported on their manufacturing base but this type of process improvement is happening across all types of business processes and in companies of all sizes. The key success factors are management commitment, employee engagement and expert mentoring in the application of Operations Excellence (lean) tools.
So get busy and get lean! Your customers will love you for it.
David has over 30 years of experience and expertise in implementing the philosophies, methodologies and tools of OpEx. If you need help implementing any of these tools or want to learn more, schedule a free consultation