Lean Supply Chain Management - Assignment

Lean Supply Chain Management Research Proposal 1
A RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON LEAN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN THE
AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
A Research Paper on Lean Supply Chain Management By
Student’s Name
Name of the Professor
Institutional Affiliation
City/State
Year/Month/Day

Lean Supply Chain Management Research Proposal 2
Executive Summary
The review is about the lean concept in the supply chain management in the automobile
industries. The challenging conditions of the business of the 21st century have led to the
companies experiencing issues like economic insecurity to the new technologies, globalization,
and increasing consumers’ demand. In the automobile industries, as the vehicles are
manufactured and designed globally, their chain of supply also increased globally with
challenges stand in the profitability way and higher value of the shareholder like long delivery
order lead to time, excess inventory in the supply chain, lack of the suppliers visibility, unreliable
schedules of production and the lengthy planning cycles demand. The global economic
meltdown effects increased the pressure on the executive of the automobile to make a good
decision about their chain of supply to have better performances.
In the competitive and challenging environment like currently, where the chain of supply
is a known tool for improving the competitiveness of the organizations, the effective and
efficient chain of supply strategy is important for manufacturers of the automotive industries and
their component manufacturers so that they can meet the consumers’ changing demands. This
paper explores the concept of the lean as the generic plans of the supply chain and presents the
framework of the strategy for the automobiles’ supply chain as the approach to responding to the
demands of the consumers that keeps on changing (Bhasin, 2010, p. 145).

Lean Supply Chain Management Research Proposal 3
TABLE OF CONTENT
Item Page
Abstract............................................................................................2
Introduction.......................................................................................4
Literature Review.........................................................................................................5
Aim and objectives of the study...............................................................8
Research questions ..............................................................................9
Methodology/ Theoretical Content............................................................9
Hypothesis..............................................................................9
Data collection............................................................................................................9
Experimental setup.......................................................................................................10
Results.............................................................................................11
Discussion .......................................................................................11
Project Planning and Gnat Chart..............................................................12
Conclusion.......................................................................................13
Bibliography.....................................................................................14

Lean Supply Chain Management Research Proposal 4
INTRODUCTION
Severe competition, raising the requirements of the customer and the market demands
that are fluctuating has led to the demanding of the customer with the preference increase. This
is because of the marketplace of the today that has more introductions of the competitive
products, products of a shorter lifecycle, and the volatile demand that makes the life cycle
difficult and uncertain to predict. Participation of the automotive industry in the globalization
has provided them with important opportunities and gave the manufactures pressure to
manufacture quality, improve the styling, increase the efficiency of the organization and drive
the features of innovation into their products in the effort to expand new markets and attracts
more customers.
This challenge shows that manufacturers of the automobile need to become flexible and
responsive to the customers’ demands to succeed. According to (Association, 2012), the major
function of the supply chain management in improving the performance of the automobile
industry is highlighted. Organizations and authorities have acknowledged the function of the
supply chain as the source of the benefit of the competition to the automobile industry. In the
light of this, for the last years, the practices of supply chain management developed towards
more processes and approaches of the lean in order to reduce cost through elimination of the
inefficiencies.
Some of the concepts that have led to the improvement of the performances of supply
chain through setup costs are: just in time, virtual inventory, global and customized network,
rationalization of the supplier, outsourcing, reduction in the distribution facilities number, and
reduction of materials of buffer, time and capacity