SDCExec.com |

By Terry Onica

A thriving global automotive industry depends on a standard level of performance for materials flow, no matter where the supply base is located. As original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) embrace lean manufacturing principles and seek to balance production with demand, it is paramount that the right supplier is at the right plant at the right time for production to stay on schedule. For automotive suppliers, this means delivery performance must be perfect, as there is a steep price to pay for inventory that's in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now, as automotive manufacturers extend their supply chains to tap a global supply base, they also are adopting global standards that help suppliers in emerging markets comply with OEM requirements and demonstrate best-in-class manufacturing capabilities.

The Perfect Lean Market

Economists have proposed that having access to the right information at the right time is a major part of a "perfect" market. The principles of lean manufacturing are being adopted by automotive manufacturers everywhere, and the benefits of practical applications can be seen as companies implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology to automate business processes across systems, improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

But achieving the "perfect lean market" is about more than just speeding up production and "slimming down" by eliminating waste in the production process. In the perfect lean market, manufacturing data move through the supply chain unconstrained by geographic, technical or business obstacles; it doesn't depend on human intervention to get data from one business partner to another. Also, in this same context, access to data by multiple functional domains within the distributed enterprise should be available as needed rather than constrained by standalone systems that support a single functional domain or even single business process.

E-mail, fax machines and telephones are still the mainstays of many manufacturing supply chain communications; however, data do not actually get into the end user systems any faster than people can re-enter the data — hopefully, accurately. By improving supply chain communications, manufacturers can get ever closer to achieving the perfect lean market.