A Study of Lean Management, Lead Time and its Application

This report provides an in-depth analysis of lean management principles, including Kaizen, Lean Six Sigma, and Total Quality Management (TQM), and their application within a business context. The report uses Tesco, a major UK retailer, as a case study to illustrate how these concepts can be implemented to improve operational efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction. It further explores the concept of lead time, providing a detailed calculation of lead time for a customized product, and its importance in supply chain management. The report highlights the benefits of adopting lean methodologies for waste reduction, cost optimization, and overall business performance. The report concludes that lean management principles are highly beneficial for organizations, enabling them to improve their internal functionalities and provide better customer experiences. The report is a valuable resource for students studying business management, operations management, and supply chain management. This report is available on Desklib, a platform providing past papers and solved assignments for students.

A STUDY OF LEAN
MANAGEMENT AND
LEADTIME
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
1.Lean management concepts......................................................................................................3
2. Organisational overview..........................................................................................................6
3. Suggestion of lean concept for the organisation......................................................................6
4. Lead time calculation...............................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Lean management is the efficient process of maintaining the organisation which cooperates
the continuous improvement, it is a long term process for working systematically for achieving
the little incremental modifications within the processes in order to improvise the efficiency and
productivity (Villalba-Diez and Zheng, 2020). Main aspect of lean management is to foster the
values to the consumer by utilising the resources. lead time define as the total amount of time
which takes from task initiation to its ending. Businesses view the lead time during production,
supply chain management, it is important for the businesses to predict the sales and making their
operations efficient to enhance the customer satisfaction. Tesco a British multinational groceries
and general merchandise, headquarter is present in Welwyn garden city, England UK. Following
report will discuss the concepts of lean management which mainly highlights the Kaizen, lean
six sigma and lean start up management concept along with its benefits. It further discusses the
suggestion of one concept to organisation, it also highlight the lead time calculation for the case
which is given for the report.
MAIN BODY
1.Lean management concepts
Lean management aims to improvise the business operations to make it efficient and
overall enhance the functionality of business. It is the core value of company’s business because
operational management is directly span with worker experience. Following are the concept of
lean management.
Kaizen:
Kaizen is the process of constructing the continuous development which is based on the
solution that little, ongoing positive commute can lead to better improvements. Generally, it is
done on the basis of the cooperation and commitment in harmony with the processes that could
utilizes the top down changes for accomplishing the transformation (Rivera and et.al 2021).
There is some aspect of the kaizen model which are teamwork, discipline, enhanced morale,
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quality circles and recommendations for the improvement. Kaizen consider as the building block
of all lean manufacturing process that concentrates on reducing waste to enhance the
productivity which is essential for the businesses to sustain in market. its main advantage is that
it eliminates the waste by decreasing the over manufacturing, also have the little idle time which
aims to decrease the unnecessary activities.
Thus it is efficient for the businesses to manage their finance which helps them in
investing on the other projects as well. It helps in eliminating the unusual investment which leads
to impact on financial capacity of the firm. By decreasing the waste and focus on productivity
assists the organisation to prepare best products and deliver it to consumers. With this worker
can become more accountable and focus on enhancing the customer satisfaction by delivering
the better and qualitative services (Florescu and Barabas,2022). Tesco company utilises the
kaizen concept for cultivating the better work place culture where the continuous improvement is
found, thus it helps them in eliminating the total waste which is helpful in enhancing the
profitability of the brand. This method is utilising by the Tesco firm to increase the efficiency
within their operational work. where the main task of the manager is to come up with the
efficient approach for the product improvement. While leaders also support the employees to
perform their job within a flexible workplace and stay encouraged towards achieving the desired
goal of organisation. valuable operation management of the firm is to create the market and to
enhance the consumer loyalty. Company also focuses on maximizing their market development
to boosts their sales.
Lean six sigma:
Lean six sigma is the better approach which depends on the collaborative team member’s
effort in enhancing the overall performance by eliminating the waste and to decrease the
variation. It provides the tools and techniques to the businesses in order to optimise their
business processes. It overall aims to enhance the profitability and reduce the variation within
process that assists in defect reduction (Atti, 2019). Lean six sigma also beneficial for the
workplace environment where the employee feels more encouraged towards their work and often
work as to deliver the better result in their task which overall improvise the brand image of the
organisation. there are many benefits which is linked with the lean six sigma as it follows the
consumer focused philosophy to lead the organisation to make the better decisions for practicing
the business core values in order to produce the qualitative output. With the help of this

organisation can easily retain the consumer and make them a potential customer for the
profitable business. It is also beneficial for the customer perspective as their needs and
requirement can easily fulfilled by the businesses which they preferred to avail the services.
Deploy of lean six sigma allows the firms to understand their customer as what things are
important to them thus it assists in focusing on the efforts where it adds the more values, also
lead to measure and improving what consumers are care about. Another benefit which it offers to
the user is to their satisfaction can be improved and they will easily get the affordable products.
Thus if the organisation uses this approach then it will be beneficial for them to develop large
customer base which leads them to generate more revenues (Ismail and et.al 2019). Tesco
company utilises the six sigma techniques which is to analyse the process performance and to
understand their process capability for finding the better solutions to address their workplace
problem as well as reduce the variability. As company have adapted the lean techniques notably
company’s steering wheel which is the policy development vehicle and plays a significantly role
to develop the passion for driving the better customer values. Thus Tesco utilises the lean six
sigma such as data driven for solving the problem and to devise the appropriate solution for
addressing the waste issues. Most importantly organisation’s methodologies for the quality
improvement have the better influence over their operability.
Total quality management:
TQM refer as the management approach for the long term profitability from consumer
satisfaction. In total quality management approach all members of the organisation take part in
improvising the processes, goods and services also leads to enhance the productivity within the
organisational culture. It is the continual process for analysing and eliminating the possible errors
from the manufacturing and streamlines the supply chain process, thus it overall leads to
improvise the customer experience (Ganesh and Marathe, 2019). TQM also ensures that are
workers are all set up to better momentum with the training, main purpose of the TQM is to
involves all the parties within the manufacturing process which is accountable for the complete
quality of the final services and goods. It also ensures the continual development of the internal
functionality of the organisation. standard which is set for the TQM reflects upon both internal
and industry priorities where the industrial policies are examined at various level which involves
the govern with different laws and regulation for the operational task of any business. For the
customer purpose TQM is efficient as it provides the quality assurance to the consumers as they
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will get the product which they expect, thus with this organisation can easily manage their
unsatisfied consumers and provide them a product which meets their requirement.
Use of TQM for the Tesco enables the firm to improvise the efficiency of their business
core functions. As Company uses it for their quality assurances as they are committed to provide
the better and qualitative services to customer which worth their money to invest on it. also
company aims to use TQM approach to delivers the qualitative products to the consumer which
completely fulfils their essential needs, also services are free from any defects so that customer
satisfaction can be achieved.
Overall it can be said that lean management methodologies are beneficial for the
organisations to improvise their internal functionalities (Parmar and Desai, 2019). It helps in
waste reduction so that values within the operational task can be achieved. Thus it has been
identified that Tesco company uses the lean management concept to deliver the better and
qualitative services to their potential customer.
2. Organisational overview
Tesco organisation have been selected for this report which is the grocery and general
merchandise of UK. Organisation is one of the biggest retailer in the world which is measured by
the annual gross revenues. They have diversification within their products and services that are
sells across the globe. They offer the food as well as non-food products, bakery, grocery, baby
products, clothing, household appliances and so on. Their main products are groceries which
they sell to their potential consumers. For that company have the target consumer which are
middle income consumer with the young children, however company also targets the other
segments where the consumer prefers the quality based products.
3. Suggestion of lean concept for the organisation
Lean methodology offers the numerous benefits to the organisation as for the Tesco they
aim to improvise their customer experiences (Fander, Yaghoubi and Asl-Najafi, 2021). Thus it
is recommended for the company to deploy the lean six sigma for their better business
profitability. Thus with this they can easily enhance their employee engagement within the
organisational resources that aims to deliver the better values to consumers. As by involving the
employees within the process helps in streamlining the business functionalities. One of the

biggest advantage which the lean six sigma offers is that it reduced the cost that is linked with
the improvement to processes to needed a few time, thus also helps in eliminating the errors.
With this Tesco company will be able to analyse the needs and requirements of their consumers
so that they will proceed further accordingly, it helps in eliminating the unnecessary stages so it
ultimately helps in cost reduction.
Having lean six sigma process Tesco will be able to enhance their customer satisfaction
as by delivering them product which actually meets all their requirement whether in terms of cost
or in terms of quality (Juliani and Oliveira,2019). Lean six sigma is not only concentrates on
product improvement but also assist in making the product delivery process efficient which
assures the better consumer satisfaction within the organisational services.
4. Lead time calculation
Organizations generally view their lead time in their supply chain and project management
within the pre and post processing steps (Chang, 2018). If the lead time increases, then it puts the
halt to manufacturing process which impacts the overall efficiency of the process. It has been
evaluated from the case study which is given that alex owns the shop which sells the customised
BMX bikes for which the products are made by the outsourced company, therefore below it will
discuss the lead time which it will take for the final product to delivers.
A) For calculating the lead time following formula is being used which is-
Lead time= Pre-processing + processing + post processing
Where the time it will take in pre-processing stage are 2 weeks, 1 week= 3 week
In processing stage= 4 week
Post processing= 2 week and 1 week
Overall LT= 2+1+4+2+1=10 week
It will take overall 10 weeks to design and deliver the products
B) In week 11 bike will be ready for displaying in the shop and ready for the sell.
C) It is estimated that overall it will take 15-18 weeks for delivering the bike parts from Italy to
UK.
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CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that lean management has greater importance
within the business, it overall helps the organisations for their quality assurance as well as they
can easily have enhanced their productivity and to provide the better customer experience. It also
discussed about the lead time and its importance for delivering the task within a given timeframe.
Above report have illustrated the concept of the lean management which covers the kaizen, lean
six sigma and total quality management where it discussed its overall concept and later discuss
its importance to user, furthermore these concepts are uses with regards to the organisation.
moving further report have illustrated the overview of the organisation with the discussion of its
products and services and target customer for that. Later discussed the suggestion of one of the
lean concept for the organisation. report finally concluded with the discussion of the lead time
which also highlights the case study and calculation regarding it.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Atti, G., 2019. Lean management. In Quality Management: Tools, Methods, and Standards.
Emerald Publishing Limited.
Chang, C.C., 2018. Optimal age replacement scheduling for a random work system with random
lead time. International Journal of Production Research, 56(16), pp.5511-5521.
Fander, A., Yaghoubi, S. and Asl-Najafi, J., 2021. Chemical supply chain coordination based on
technology level and lead-time considerations. RAIRO--Operations Research, 55(2).
Florescu, A. and Barabas, S., 2022. Development Trends of Production Systems through the
Integration of Lean Management and Industry 4.0. Applied Sciences, 12(10), p.4885.
Ganesh, L.S. and Marathe, R.R., 2019. Lean Six Sigma in consumer banking–an empirical
inquiry. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management.
Ismail, M.Z.M. and et.al 2019. A mini review: Lean management tools in assembly line at
automotive industry. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol.
469, No. 1, p. 012086). IOP Publishing.
Juliani, F. and Oliveira, O.J.D., 2019. Synergies between critical success factors of Lean Six
Sigma and public values. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 30(15-16),
pp.1563-1577.
Parmar, P.S. and Desai, T.N., 2019. A systematic literature review on Sustainable Lean Six
Sigma: Current status and future research directions. International Journal of Lean Six
Sigma.
Rivera, M.L. and et.al 2021. Waste identification in the operation of structural engineering
companies (SEC) according to lean management. Sustainability. 13(8). p.4249.
Villalba-Diez, J. and Zheng, X., 2020. Quantum strategic organizational design: alignment in
industry 4.0 complex-networked cyber-physical lean management
systems. Sensors, 20(20), p.5856.
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