Cooperation of lean enterprises - Techniques used for lean supply chain

Abstract

The paper presents the problems with integration of the companies within the supply chain. Usually the separate actions are undertaken by the companies to implement lean tools for production systems and external logistics processes. This situation leads to minor results or moving the costs between production and logistics processes instead of reduction. The purpose of the paper is to present the new version of Value Stream Mapping method, focused on synchronised reorganisation of company production system, external logistics processes between the company and its suppliers as well as suppliers' production processes. This paper shows the techniques currently used to support cooperation between enterprises and will demonstrate their incompleteness and how they can be improved. © 2007 International Federation for Information Processing.