Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Lean Enterprise and Supplier Development Guides”
Supplier Development is about empowering front line employees It is front line employees who make a company successful. Nike has recently emphasized this in their supplier development initiatives. According to executives at Nike “the culture of empowerment that is core to making lean really work…requires…management [to] understand that the worker is the closest to the process and to the act of manufacturing and therefore …
Is it a bird, is it a plane – no it’s the Entrepreneurial Man! And so is the reaction of many of us to what an Entrepreneur is. Someone who defies the gravity of a salary. Someone who is a loner, works longer hours than humanly possible and in their spare time goes on a holiday to outer space. Our …
In the spirit of the holiday season let’s have a bit of fun. In a previous post we wrote about standardisation and 5S as the foundation for supplier development. During the holidays I took my kids to watch Big Hero 6. It was a lot of fun and I would recommend it to anyone with kids. Always attentive to continuos …
Standardisation as a pillar of economic growth Even though the roots of Supplier Development lie in Lean Improvement the role of standardisation has been significantly overlooked in most Supplier Development practises. In the cases where it has been emphasised it has mostly been done as a record keeping function without embedding it in the operations of the company being developed. To many …
Have we made it? Enterprise Development has gained momentum in South Africa over the past few years. Many in South Africa are still debating if the economy is feeling the impact of this. Some of the reasons behind this are that many companies have gone about outsourcing their current operations, with very little economic value add. In the frenzy to …
The Team Huddle is a short meeting that takes place at the beginning of every shift or every day. The Team Huddle takes the form of a meeting that requires participation by everyone in the team and takes place around your visual management area. The benefit of the Team Huddle is engagement and participation, however the Huddle can be misinterpreted …
Using a Dashboard As a company matures there are a significant amount of things to manage. Using a dashboard for managing your business provides you and your staff with an overview of your operation and the areas in which you can improve. Not having a dashboard is like steering a ship without a compass or a map. A dashboard assists …
Some Enterprise Development practitioners in South Africa have criticised the idea of using a business plan. Mostly the reason for this is that a business plan is developed at the start of a business and then left and never again looked at. It cannot be denied that any small business that wants to be successful has to plan. The criticism regarding …
The original intention of the BBBEE codes was to link Enterprise Development to Preferential Procurement. From a procurement point of view there was and is however a lot of risk associated with procuring from companies that require development. By the time a procurement officer looks at any company in the stages of commercial adjudication all the boxes need to be …
With the shift in Enterprise development to Enterprise and Supplier Development many companies will now start considering Lean Supplier Development as a methodology to develop their suppliers. See our post on Supplier Development in South Africa for more information on this. The Lean or continuous improvement movement is built around a major component which is the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA) cycle. This cycle has at …
