Quick-Scan – Towards a Strategy for Responsive and Resilient Value Chains

Abstract

To remain competitive in today’s increasingly dynamic and complex environments, manufacturing enterprises must build resilience to respond to changes quickly. As such, lean production has provided firms with an alternative to "fat and lazy" mass production. In addition, Quick Response Manufacturing has been presented as a credible supplement to lean production, specifically in High Mix, Low Volume environments. Drawing on practical insights from two case studies, we present a Quick-Scan method as an initial step towards creating resilient and responsive value chain strategies. The approach combines manufacturing critical-path time mapping from Quick Response Manufacturing with Gemba-based discovery and learning from Lean - to find, face, and frame real problems, and thereafter form solutions together with managers and front-line personnel. The method has been adopted in both cases as a means of revitalizing operations with the intention of enabling more effective delivery of customer-specific products.