Lean and Agile Value Chain Management: A Guide to the Next Level of Improvement

By Ehap H. Sabri, Ph.D. and Salim N. Shaikh

Published January 2010 by J. Ross Publishing

One of the biggest challenges for companies in today’s competitive environment is to get products to customers when and where they need it, exactly the way they want it, with a competitive price and in a cost effective manner. Managing the value chain is becoming more complicated because of globalization, outsourcing, the need for shorter time to market, and the requirements for greater responsiveness and flexibility due to customer changes.

Although the benefits of applying lean concepts or improving the flexibility of a value chain are clear and desperately needed in today’s competitive environment, none of the current literature provides guidance on how to do this. Lean and Agile Value Chain Management fills that gap by providing a breakthrough start-to-finish roadmap for organizations to implement a lean and agile value chain transformation program successfully. It brings together the field’s latest advances and offers practical, proven tactics and detailed guidance into every aspect of value chain process redesign, including mapping the existing process, intelligently leveraging new technologies, building a strategy for strengthening the relationship with suppliers and customers, identifying comprehensive related metrics, and much more.

Key Features:

• Provides an executive review on how lean and agile value chain (LAVC) principles and enablers can help companies address today’s challenges and gain a competitive advantage
• Gives business professionals a comprehensive framework for reducing costs and lead time, improving flexibility, eliminating non-value added activities, and optimizing the transformation program to becoming lean and agile
• Explains how to build LAVC strategies and enable their leading-edge technologies
• Presents strategies for senior managers to use in planning for transformation programs
• Supplies middle managers the tools to effectively manage and implement best practices
• Includes cases studies, industry success stories, sample project plans, and lessons learned applicable to most any industry