Thursday, November 05, 2009
Supplier Relationships in a Lean Enterprise
EMS Consulting Group's November newsletter is out. This month we're talking about Supplier Relationships and the Lean Supply Chain. The foundation of successful supplier relationships in a lean enterprise is trust. The transformation from a typical (adversarial) relationship with a supplier to a lean relationship (treating the supplier as an extension of your organization) takes time. In our latest newsletter, we talk about such relationships. To check it out, visit: http://www.emsstrategies.com/newsletter110109.htm
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4 comments:
You're labeling your entry Lean Supply Chain, but focus on supplier relationships in a lean enterprise. I believe there is a contradiction there. Indeed, to really perform a lean supply chain, one needs to ge way beyond the limits of the enterprise, looking at optimizing the end to end supply chain, rather than the individual company. European and American companies have been excellent in implementing lean by pushing their inventories (for example) out to their suppliers and customers. The automotive industry is the best example.
Actually, the entry was labeled "Supplier Relationships in a Lean Enterprise" and the blog is named "Lean Supply Chain." While there is not a conflict between supplier relationships in a lean enterprise and lean supply chain, you rightly point out that it is important to apply lean thinking to the entire supply chain. This is what my book (Improving the Extended Value Stream: Lean for the Entire Supply Chain) is all about. Pushing inventory to suppliers and customers is not proper application of lean and does not promote a long-term, financially healthy supply chain.
There is a definite relationship in having a lean supply chain and building strong relationships with your suppliers. I have seen this with our customers utilizing the B2B Connex vendor portal solution to remove manual processes and focus on supplier KPI's and the strategic elements of the relationship. This removes tedious tasks like faxing, emailing and phone calls and focuses on a single source document that provides accountability and traceability.
Supply Chain Management (SCM) has gained tremendous momentum over the past decade and is rightfully seen as a competitive imperative in today’s far-reaching and increasingly more complex supply networks. However, moving on from the old era of functional excellence to state-of-the-art supply chain management practice requires executive understanding of how integrated supply chains can delight customers, how to overcome adverse supply chain dynamics and organizational barriers, as well as how to successfully take a supply chain capability to market. Advancing supply chain management can move you from delivering products to delivering value.
The IMD OWP 2010 sessions explore four themes- Linking value propositions with SCM, Leading supply chain transformation, Winning in service through SCM, Taking a supply chain capability to market
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