Winning the Lean Supply Chain is not just about technology, but also about the foresight and strategic vision of China's manufacturing industry philosophy

The Importance of Lean Supply Chain for the High Quality Development of China's Manufacturing Industry

I remember when I first entered our industry, I asked a senior in the industry how Chinese companies can do a good job in supplier strategic coordination. He once said with concern that in China, there is a lack of cultural and conceptual support for supplier strategic coordination.

Time has passed, and in the past two decades, with the stable position of China as the world's second-largest economy, China's manufacturing industry has made great strides, driving the refinement and progress of market share, user stickiness, product technology, manufacturing technology, and more; Having resources such as performance, scale, and hardware assets; But compared to the world's excellent manufacturing industry samples, while we are making progress and strengthening ourselves, we have neglected the investment and cultivation of supplier strategic management, as well as the construction of customer collaboration management and supply chain.

These shortcomings are becoming increasingly apparent in the sustainable development of enterprises, manifested in insufficient momentum for benign optimization of supply chain costs, inability to match the quality of purchased materials with the quality oriented development of enterprises, and poor performance of suppliers in timely performance; The slow response of suppliers has affected their agile response to the market; The construction of an information sharing platform still requires a high degree of consensus between the supply and demand sides.

Lean supply chain is an important tool for maintaining competitive advantage in today's excellent manufacturing industry. Benchmarking on leading manufacturing industry samples, including Toyota, engineering equipment industry leader Caterpillar, and excellent domestic enterprise Huawei, they have continuously carried out end-to-end process integration for enterprises, making the process from market information to product delivery the lifeblood of the enterprise. Logistics, capital flow, and information flow operate efficiently in this pipeline system, thereby achieving the goal of increasing market share and profitability growth. Huawei's ten-year supply chain system construction, from a sales revenue of 33 billion RMB in 2009 to 600 billion RMB in 2017, has played an indispensable role. They have gone through the initial construction stage of the supply chain, the global supply chain construction stage, the stage of connecting the entire supply chain and front-end delivery, and the stage of upgrading the supply chain, procurement process, and IT system.

2. Enterprises should pay attention to the following abilities when building a lean supply chain

Through our practical experience in the enterprise, it has been demonstrated that in the construction of a lean supply chain, these several capabilities are particularly crucial: including supply chain collaboration planning aimed at addressing process breakpoints and interface issues; Aiming to solve the supply chain flexibility capability of rapid response to demand in the production and manufacturing process; Aiming to solve the procurement strategy of long procurement cycles and inventory backup; Aiming to address the issue of cultivating and developing strategic suppliers with collaborative capabilities; And the construction of a data transparency and information platform to address real-time sharing of information flow and logistics.

3. Combining the world's excellent enterprise lean supply chain model and the AIBORI lean supply chain methodology, the top-level architecture of lean supply chain is as follows

3.1) Lean supply chain objective: To achieve business performance and profitability growth by implementing timely and collaborative control of physical, information, and capital flows.

3.2) The functional design of lean supply chain includes:

3.2.1 Consolidate the Lean Workstation System and Beat Production Line Standards.

3.2.2 Implement on-site material flow rules through the construction of lean simulation production lines and lean logistics distribution.

3.2.3 Establish an information flow management system, covering three levels of planning linkage: demand management, production and sales coordination management, master plan, integrated linkage plan, and workstation system transition plan.

3.2.4 Establish supplier collaborative management for strategic procurement, and establish a benign, sustainable, and adaptable supplier resource pool and capability through supplier admission, supplier strategy and selection, supplier procurement strategy, supplier evaluation and development, and other means.

3.2.5 Build the ability to coordinate procurement and production plans for daily procurement, in order to achieve a balance between on-time completion rate and inventory control.

3.2.6构建适配的仓储物流模式，根据物料不同，选择合适的物流模式，并建设与供应商物流信息协同共享的方式。

3.2.7逐步构建供应链KPI的绩效监控管理体系，来衡量供应链过程绩效表现，并找到改进机会，驱动组织持续改进供应链绩效表现。

4.重点谈谈供应商战略协同

4.1）在陪伴诸多企业构建其供应链能力的过程中，业界前辈曾经说过的话，不时在耳边响起。我们发现，大多数中国企业在采购方面仍然处于较初级的寻源和采购阶段，其组织架构设置就反应出其对战略采购的重视度和投入是不够的，表现在战略采购和日常采购岗位混合和业务交叉，几十个亿的企业，竟然没有战略采购岗位的设置，岗位能力发展定位不清楚，KPI引领不清晰，是无法支撑供应商战略协同的核心因素之一。

4.2）缺乏长远的与供应商协同发展的理念与思维，看重短期利益，更愿意通过比价招标去选择供应商，不愿意投入资源去做供应商能力发展规划与管理，导致采购成本管理与采购质量管理欠帐太多。

4.3）所以建议要把战略采购的能力建设提升到公司的战略高度，要和内部制造能力建设放在等同重要的位置上考虑，通过品类采购职能和SQE共同加持，将内部精益推广到供应商，同时，通过供应商准入、发展、评价不断优化供应商池，加大供应商提升的动能，和供应商共赢发展。

4.4）实施要点