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THERE is clearly confusion between Lean, Agile, 6 Sigma, TQM, etc. But what falls under the Lean umbrella and how do you get there? And how do we avoid initiative overload?

The term Lean suggests no fat or a minimum level of fat and applying this to business would imply minimum levels of waste. This suggests that to become lean we must remove waste from the business processes to leave just that activity that adds value. Whilst this would appear logical, actually understanding that which is of value versus that which is not, and then applying this to all aspects of a business is difficult. And often the answers do not lie within the grasp of management running the business, but with people who are closest to the process and better placed to see the value and waste. Read More:A step by step guide to lean manufacturing

Does Innovation Through Acquisition Work? - Forbes.com
Microsoft’s acquisition of Great Plains to link front-end applications with enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications is a case in point, Chaudhuri notes. “The idea behind the deal is to have seamless integration between the back-end ERP applications, like manufacturing planning, supply-chain management, HR management and financial accounting, and front-end Windows and Office applications. But since Great Plains’ relationship-based consulting approach, supporting processes and IT systems are very different from Microsoft’s infrastructure (which is geared toward selling packaged software), these differences are naturally taking time to be reconciled,”