Lean Lessons Learned

1 comment February 27th, 2007 David Bush - Iasta

In a recent Industry Week article, Dave Gleditsch, CTO of Pelion Systems, Inc, talked about some common threads to lean success and how lean and flow transformations can drive impressive margin, market share leadership, dramatic value increase, inventory savings, cycle time reductions, increased on-time shipping performance, and productivity improvements.

The great thing about this particular article is that the lessons learned on the road to lean transformation also apply to strategic sourcing and sourcing technology selection.

Do everything with the customer in mind.

Who are the different users of the application? What do they need to do? Does the application support their needs?

One size does not fit all.

Just like all e-Sourcing applications are not equal, no single e-Sourcing application is right for all customers. Understand your weaknesses and pick the solution with the appropriate strengths.

Show me the money.

It’s all about saving money. Make sure your e-Sourcing application can capture, report on, and track savings as well as assist you with your compliance initiatives.

How good is your company ENTITLED to be?

Does the platform support your vision of how good your company is entitled to be?

Think BIG with respect to process.

Does your e-Sourcing solution align with your processes, increase your productivity, and eliminate unnecessary spend?

As the industry week article notes, there are enormous benefits that can be achieved through stepping back from the process that one has been very close to for many years and envisioning new process relationships that could drive significant cycle time reduction and dramatic elimination of non-value added work while creating improved flexibility. This is the first step on the road to substantial savings.

Entry Filed under: General, Technology, e-Sourcing Marketplace