An ontology for a lean supply chain

Abstract

In today's competitive manufacturing environment supply chains are spread across the oceans. For a large number of companies lean effort means closely examining the factory floor processes to pull the work. In reality the work on floor is triggered by demand from customer and lean goes well beyond four walls of the company. Today there is more reliance on the suppliers and contract manufactures for shorter lead times and quick responses to any changes in customer demand. Lean supply chain ontology proposes a model to achieve these goals of shorter lead times and faster response. The process adopted in this research to come up with the ontology starts with listing the terms related to a lean supply chain followed by classification of these terms in to various classes based on their importance to the core subject. One these two steps are completed the terms are defined and a model is proposed to come up with a lean supply chain. This model also can help to maintain a low level of inventory across the supply chain since inventory build up is avoided and parts are not built to forecast.