In the last several years, the manufacturing sector has moved from vertically organized structures to horizontal organizations; that is, a single company no longer controls its product from, let’s say, the mine to the store shelf. Instead, today’s companies control only pieces of the supply chain, and the companies and divisions controlling those various components may be located just about anywhere in the world.

Fortunately, the blurring of the line between manufacturing and supply chain logistics brings with it the opportunity to move the management concepts that produce efficient manufacturing to supply chain management. One efficient manufacturing concept stands out as most successful: the concept of “lean.”