The Lea®n Extended Enterprise

The competition of tomorrow is moving away from the level of the individual company and towards the level of supply chain. It is at this level that Lean organisations should evolve and become more flexible, self organising and self adapting entities. Today Lean implementations are based on principles with no clear scope as to how to achieve middle to long term benefits at the level of the extended enterprise. The objective is mostly based on achieving short term benefits through the implementation of mere techniques at the individual factory level. Therefore a new theory is needed to incorporate a set of practical rules. The approach for the interrelationship between theory and practice of Lean is based on systems thinking and the objectives of the learning enterprise. Lean should be practiced in conjunction with Open Innovation based upon customer-driven value creation and not merely customer-driven demand. The Lean extended enterprise should evolve towards a continuously learning organisation through customer integration in the product development and deployment cycle.