FUTURE TECHNOLOGY
How businesses can restructure
using lean approach
Lean thinking demands that anything that does not add value to
a customer must be eliminated.
G
overnments within the GCC
have been making use of lean
practices while providing
government services for some time now.
In UAE, for example, they have gone as
far as to make lean administration one of
the government’s four pillars of its Smart
government strategy. Similarly, lean
practices bring many benefits to businesses
and now is the time for them to be
embraced by enterprises within the region,
given the lower oil prices and a stagnation
in the regional economies.
Lean is a systematic approach to
identifying and eliminating waste through
continuous improvement and covers the
complete spectrum of a value chain. It is
not, as some believe confined just to the
manufacturing activities of high volume
repetitive businesses.
While, traditionally, lean has been
the focus of high volume repetitive
industries, engineer-to-order companies
within project based manufacturing
sectors, can also benefit from
implementing lean principles and
provide business modelling, enterprise
operational intelligence, planning,
execution, waste analysis and reduction
capabilities.
The benefits for adopting lean enterprise
concepts in a complex engineer–toorder business depends on the level of
integration that exists from design through
engineering into build, installation and
service.
Lean enterprise benefits for companies
include:
• Improved bid management and win
ratios from data re-use and business
focus
• Better project control, risk mitigation
and cost management through the
integration of project management
activities with back office functions
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