Analysis of lean enterprise should start with the aim to understand the major essence of lean process and of its importance to different businesses. Lean Enterprise Institute defines lean in simple words, “creating more value for customers with fewer resources” (Lean.org). Thus, lean techniques are useful for the companies, because they help to find efficient ways of combining the aim of meeting customers’ needs effectively and saving more of resources of the company for future practices. The search for cheaper ways of creating a good or a service that will create final value to the consumer is an essential practice for the businesses.
Lean Enterprise involves three key elements that are the core points of the whole process (Tmac.org):
Discipline
Waste elimination
Standardization
Each of those elements has a high importance for the companies, if they have made a decision to implement lean. Besides those elements, lean includes important strategies that serve as the steps of reaching the final goal. Those strategies may vary from one company to another, but among them, there may be the following ones: the strive for continuous improvement, reduction of variation through six sigma, increase of the speed of the manufacturing process, using metrics for operational and business results, etc. (Tmac.org).
The company that I would like to analyze is Panera Bread, a chain of bakery-cafes on the territory of United States and Canada. Panera Bread is a successful business that is famous for its leadership and for its high quality products. Currently Panera is not famous for the use of lean techniques, and this is why I consider the analysis important, as it may give the hints for the future lean implementation. It will be useful for Panera Bread to increase the speed of manufacturing process and to have keep up with the principles of continuous improvement. In addition, waste elimination and standardization would become very important elements of the operation process, because Panera has thousands of locations and the volume of production is very big. Therefore, lean’s techniques and principles of work will bring additional benefits for Panera and will help to reduce the cost of production. At the same time, this process will help Panera Bread to decrease the prices and to make the products affordable for wider layers of society. We already know that lean techniques aim to create value with minimum of spending. For Panera, this process will help to create higher value, as lower prices for high quality products always create value for customers and contribute to the increase of the target market and to the growth of the number of loyal customers.
At this point, it will be useful to conduct an analysis of the operational excellence techniques and lean enterprise. In the matrix below, you can see the comparison and contrast of theory of constraints, TQM and Six Sigma.
In the table above, we can see that operational excellence techniques have many things in common with lean enterprise. At the same time, however, there are differences that separate them from each other.
Panera Bread, the company that I have chosen for a brief analysis, does not have a printed vision statement. The mission statement of Panera (“A loaf of bread in every arm”) emphasizes the point that the company represents bakery-cafes and that its delicious bread products should be available for everyone. However, Panera Bread sees itself as a company that want to create a special experience for its customers and want to bring only high quality delicious foods for the clients. From this point, we can say that Panera strives to create value for customers by offering an unforgettable experience in a pleasant atmosphere, and that company wants to pay attention to tiny details that contribute to the value creation not only for customers, but also for the whole society (Farfan, 2015). In such a way, Panera Bread can actively start to involve lean techniques in its production process, because it will help the company to increase its profits and will bring even higher value to the customers, as it can help to make Panera affordable for wider layers of society, as I have mentioned in one of the paragraphs above.
Besides lean techniques, Panera Bread can actively involve other operational excellence techniques, because orientation on the long-term and improvement in the overall performance of the company will definitely be beneficial for the business and will help the company to increase the influence of its competitive advantage. For instance, implementation of Six Sigma can improve the employees-training process and can assist to the control of employees’ behaviors and attitudes throughout the working process. Moreover, total quality management can help to make the production process more efficient, which will significantly affect various fields of the business, such as financial, operational and productivity growth.
Overall, we can say that implementation of lean techniques as well as of operational excellence tools is a beneficial step for the businesses, because those methods bring high value and their major aim is to improve overall performance of the company and to contribute to the future growth.
References
Farfan, B. (2015, November 20). Panera Bread's Restaurant Mission Statement - It's All About Bread at Panera. Retrieved February 26, 2016, from http://retailindustry.about.com/od/retailbestpractices/ig/Company-Mission-Statements/Panera-Bread-Mission-Statement.htm
Lean Implementation and Lean Training. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2016, from http://www.tmac.org/services/lean-enterprise
Rattner, S. (2006, August 9). What is the Theory of Constraints, and How Does it Compare to Lean Thinking? | Lean Enterprise Institute. Retrieved February 26, 2016, from http://www.lean.org/common/display/?o=223
Total Quality Management (TQM). (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2016, from http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/total-quality-management/overview/overview.html
What is Lean? (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2016, from http://www.lean.org/WhatsLean/
What is Six Sigma? (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2016, from http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/six-sigma/overview/overview.html
