First, let’s consider two types of customers. On one side you have consumers who are looking for products tailored to their unique needs and desires. At the same time another group of customers is perfectly happy with more traditional price, quality and delivery tradeoffs, and limited product options. They don’t want to have to think about and answer a laundry list of questions when making a purchase decision. Continue reading…

End-to-end value streams encompass all aspects of an enterprise: product development and commercialization, marketing and sales, procurement and manufacturing, and after-market service. The primary benefit to customers is a noticeably superior product or service. For a company, the benefits are enhanced responsiveness and superior profit margins (mostly from increase in market share, reduced inventory, and lower costs to serve). Continue reading…

When lean process improvement activities move beyond production and distribution operations, and into transactional areas, it’s a great time for companies to abandon artificial market segments and set up end-to-end value streams that encompass all aspects of an enterprise.
Organized according to the specific set of values being sought by a group of customers, end-to-end value [...] Continue reading…

For more than three decades, Lean Production Systems have been successfully utilized and deployed globally to transform the operations of all types of companies, small, large, private and public.  Originally developed and popularized by Toyota, lean has been the operational excellence tool of choice for companies wanting to reduce cost, free up working capital and [...] Continue reading…