Supply Chain View

A lengthy post today that’s been in the pipeline for a while. The Lean Enterprise Institute have published an English translation of The Birth of Lean, recounting the experiences of the early Toyota practitioners, and how their experiences shaped what became Lean methods and thinking. The introduction and first chapter are available as a free […]

Sometimes people get hung up on semantics. Sometimes it pays to be clear – very clear. I am currently trying to wade through some waters muddied by misunderstanding and poor use of terminology. My employer has had some good quality experience of Lean (albeit in a fairly small section of its operations) for about four […]

At a seminar I ran earlier this week for CILT, this is a paraphrasing of what one of the delegates said to me: “Lean is all about cost reduction. It focuses on the internal processes of the company. It does not think about the customer.” It is now over 60 years since Toyoda Kiichiro, then […]

I was interested to find an article in this month’s Logistics & Transport Focus headed “No more lean times: why inventory is not waste and warehouses add value”. The author, Steve Sordy, has chosen a title that is a kind of teasing of the more dogmatic of lean devotees – British culture has little patience […]

(with apologies to Peter Norvig) Some time ago, the wise and well-respected computer scientist Peter Norvig wrote an article called “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years”. I read it recently and found it so full of good sense I couldn’t resist taking the spirit of Norvig’s thoughts and applying them to supply chain management. Norvig’s […]

Books, still crammed with useful information that’s not on the web. What should you be reading to improve your Supply Chain or Lean knowledge? Find invaluable books here »

Supply Chain View has been collecting free resources from the web, for Supply Chain Management, Lean and Six Sigma. Find resources here »

Sometimes people tell me that 5S only applies in factories, and if they’ve been exposed to the “inactive banana” school of dim-witted implementation I can’t blame them. But here’s a cautionary tale that might persuade you that the principles – intelligently applied – are sound. Supply Chain View has been “off air” for a while […]

This is basic stuff, but as usual there is a lack of clear and concise explanations of this on the web. It is also very important, as most methods of inventory control can be reexpressed as some form of reorder point method. Hence this simple introduction. I have also prepared a Reference Sheet that summarises […]

As I’ve been working from home a lot recently, I’ve had the radio on to give the office a bit of a ‘buzz’ and today I overheard this story on BBC 6 Music. Camelot have withdrawn a lottery scratchcard because customers couldn’t work out when they had won. The customers’ confusion stems from the concept […]