The Supply Chain

In this example, the principles of simplicity in business were introduced to the maintenance function in the supply chain of an integrated rail infrastructure and transport corporation. It all started as an opportunity to provide some business improvement tools to reduce the amount of waste in the supply chain for maintaining locomotives and wagons.

The actual starting point was bringing representatives from the rail business, customers and suppliers together to hear what the customers defined as "value". This activity initiated a down to earth review of how the supply chain was wasting resources doing things the customer was not willing to pay for, leading to increased costs and lower profits along the chain.

It then adopted aspects of the Simpler Business approach to improve its competitiveness. Furthermore, managers in the business are now starting to look for simpler, common sense approaches to their implementation of improvement programs such as Lean Thinking and Six Sigma.