Indeed, culture is a big stumbling block when it comes to adopting lean practices and the enabling technology underneath it all. That’s why some vendors are joining forces in an attempt to bring the people — not just the processes — together. It is about closing the loop and filling in gaps wherever they may be.
“Lean IT can be as simple as giving someone the tools to collaborate on product development, whether they are in the office or across the world,” says Dave Lassiter, industry solutions director of Microsoft’s U.S. manufacturing resources sector. To that end, “we believe SharePoint and our unified communications capabilities have an impact on business productivity.”
Others see lean IT in a different way. Enterprise IT management vendor CA Inc. (formerly known as Computer Associates), for example, applies lean to application development. “We think IT value streams are the applications you deliver on behalf of your business,” says David Hurwitz, CA’s vice president of solutions marketing. That’s why application development methodologies, such as SCRUM, which emphasizes rapid iterations of application development, are becoming popular. And CA is pushing the envelope even further by partnering with salesforce.com, Inc. to deliver a new cloud-based applications development tool called CA Agile Planner, which will be available in the spring on the Force.com platform.
Similarly, lean practices are finding their way into product development and PLM as companies evaluate new ways to increase overall operational excellence.
“We are finding that customers have to design in the lean business process,” says Oracle’s Barcus. Oracle’s Agile PLM product is good for that, he says, because it enables collaboration. “That’s where the process starts because if I’m planning for the wrong items or not able to support what my customers have requested, then I’ve wasted my effort.”
Avoiding wasted effort is really the crux of why lean is an important element in the enterprise. And now, manufacturers want to enlist partners in their lean programs as well, perhaps because of the need to manage supply chain risk as a key element of a successful lean IT program.
In manufacturing, lean often means just-in-time product delivery and keeping the right amount of inventory on hand. But that means forming tighter collaborative bonds with suppliers. “If you have a lean practice that only folds two days of production inventory into the schedule, and you are relying on suppliers to deliver goods, your risk just went up, because if a supplier misses the delivery, you have real problems,” says Peter Scott, vice president of supply chain solutions at Exostar, a vendor of supply chain visibility tools for the aerospace and defense industry.
In that case, a tight-knit lean operation can be sabotaged by a hiccup in the supply chain. In order to give customers a better grasp on what’s going on with partners, Exostar rolled out a new version of its SCM platform that has business intelligence capability. It includes a reporting engine that can apply analytics against supplier data and the supply chain processes.
Management Dynamics, a purveyor of global trade management software, did something similar with the release in December of a supplier portal to help companies manage purchase orders with contract manufacturers.
Again, in business, lean is about visibility and agility. “It’s not about cutting or doing something unpleasant like going on a diet. It’s about being fit,” says CA’s Hurwitz. “Lean helps you live underneath your budget ceiling. In tough economic times, lean is a great way to make sure you are delivering the maximum value for whatever resources you’ve got.”