Lean Management
Questions and Answers
1. What are the similarities and differences between lean and agile supply chain strategies?
Similarities in Lean and Agile Supply Chain Strategies:
In both approaches, lean practice has transformed the downstream stages of the supply chain scheduling, according to demand pull, and increasing agility mean that ultimately converting to agile as today’s requirement.
Excessive stock in the supply chain and the practice of increasing batch size to create efficiencies are directly in conflict with responsiveness for both lean as well as agile supply chain strategies.
Responsiveness for both, relies on the availability of resources to meet demand.
Differences in Lean and Agile Supply Chain Strategies:
Lean
Agile
A lean strategy helps the firms to reduce the time and costs of transport for work in process by almost 10% but lean does not deal much with regards to uncertainties from customer demand in particular emergency or special orders.
An agile concentrates on maximizing the responsiveness to customer demand.
A lean strategy is capable of dealing with problem of unnecessary movement of raw material and work in process effectively, the other two problems, long lead time for order delivery and production quality, must be dealt with by using agile strategy.
An agile strategy can help the firms, alleviate these customer demand problem, but it does not eliminate inefficiencies along the production processes.
The main objective of lean is on eliminating waste.
An agile system signifies flexibility and hence heightened responsiveness to changes.
2. Explain how manufacturing has evolved. The manufacturing concept was evolved with the success story of lean production, leading to the difficult situation faced by the US and European manufacturers since 1970, since then all major players in the industry have adopted the set of techniques that were then first introduced at Toyota in Japan, the
1. What are the similarities and differences between lean and agile supply chain strategies?
Similarities in Lean and Agile Supply Chain Strategies:
In both approaches, lean practice has transformed the downstream stages of the supply chain scheduling, according to demand pull, and increasing agility mean that ultimately converting to agile as today’s requirement.
Excessive stock in the supply chain and the practice of increasing batch size to create efficiencies are directly in conflict with responsiveness for both lean as well as agile supply chain strategies.
Responsiveness for both, relies on the availability of resources to meet demand.
Differences in Lean and Agile Supply Chain Strategies:
Lean
Agile
A lean strategy helps the firms to reduce the time and costs of transport for work in process by almost 10% but lean does not deal much with regards to uncertainties from customer demand in particular emergency or special orders.
An agile concentrates on maximizing the responsiveness to customer demand.
A lean strategy is capable of dealing with problem of unnecessary movement of raw material and work in process effectively, the other two problems, long lead time for order delivery and production quality, must be dealt with by using agile strategy.
An agile strategy can help the firms, alleviate these customer demand problem, but it does not eliminate inefficiencies along the production processes.
The main objective of lean is on eliminating waste.
An agile system signifies flexibility and hence heightened responsiveness to changes.
2. Explain how manufacturing has evolved. The manufacturing concept was evolved with the success story of lean production, leading to the difficult situation faced by the US and European manufacturers since 1970, since then all major players in the industry have adopted the set of techniques that were then first introduced at Toyota in Japan, the
References: For completing the above questions on warehouse, has been researched and used below considerable references for accurate information: By Ruth Banomyong, Nucharee Supatn, Thammasat Business School (Thammasat University) Comparing lean and agile logistics strategies BANGKOK THAILAND Aitken, J., Christopher, M., Towill, D. 2002 Understanding, Implementing and Exploiting Agility and Leanness. International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications By Holweg Matthias, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge: The Evolution of Competition in the Automotive Industry