Reference no: EM133168816

When the Vice President of operations for a manufacturing company was given the CEO's directive to investigate lean production concepts and to implement them if appropriate, he was slightly apprehensive. Everyone knew, he thought, that ERP was the best way to run a manufacturing operation, and they had been pretty successful with their ERP system. Once he read a couple of books and a magazine article or two about lean production, however, he thought maybe there was something to it and it seemed simple enough. Dozens of companies had reported great reductions in inventory cost and other forms of waste, and with manufacturing having only five to six inventory turns per year, the prospect of significant inventory reductions was very appealing.

Encouraged by the success stories and very mindful of the CEO directive, the president wasted no time. He put out the directive to all his people to implement lean production the way it was working in the book examples he had read. A few months later, however, he was beginning to wonder about the truth of the success stories in those books.

After getting many complaints, he began to wonder if some of the people who claimed that lean production was a culturally based system and impossible to implement outside of Japan were correct.

What, he wondered, went wrong, and what he should do about it? These were certainly two critical questions that would be major concerns and he needed good answers. The CEO was reasonable and could deal with the fact that mistakes might have been made, but he would need detailed analysis and a complete action plan to get things back on track.

Discussion Topic:

What could be the possible problems be with applying lean production principles at this company? What would a comprehensive and time-phased plan to implement lean production the correct way look like?