There has been much written about lean manufacturing techniques. It is, in essence a catch all for identifying waste within business processes, designed to deliver excellent customer service, increased productivity and lower costs.  However, as a business holy grail, it is nothing else if not elusive, where the challenge is to achieve continual improvements throughout all aspects of an enterprise be it people, processes or systems. 

So the question is how to grow and keep growing, through the pursuit of never ending change? It is dynamism in its truest form, with cause and effect that necessitates vast vision and equally vast investments in people and systems. Ultimately, lean manufacturing has to be a core belief in people, which goes way beyond the resultant systems.

A well known brand, Unipart is one of Europe's leading providers of outsourced aftermarket logistics and distribution services, with a £1.3 billion turnover; it is also one of the UK's largest privately owned enterprises.  Unipart has taken up the challenge of lean manufacturing to achieve a near utopian enterprise, with its own unique culture, known to its 10,000 employees, partners and customers alike as "The Unipart Way." 

Commitment to continuous improvement
Unipart's commitment to continuous improvement is deeply ingrained throughout all of its business units and is underpinned by a diverse range of proven tools and techniques. Not least of which is its IT infrastructure which on a daily basis is expected to provide business process improvements, business opportunities and cost savings.

Just like any other major enterprise, Information Technology is Unipart's backbone but there is a slight difference. Nothing happens by chance, every system and change is assessed for its potential benefit prior to implementation and every aspect of its IT infrastructure is looked at from a business planning and mission critical point of view. Nothing is left to chance. So when it began embarking upon its implementation of SAP to underpin its Unipart Logistics System, it wasn't just a question of automating what was, but rather looking at how best to approach the supply chain for long-term business success.

Encompassing the supply chain
"In terms of our supply chain, we approached it as a business proposition and looked at all the core elements, inbound, outbound, customer and finance processes, the people and technology. We took a fresh look back in 1999 and opted for an organisation-wide installation of SAP R/3 designed to meet our and our clients rigorous requirements. We completed the final stage of our global rollout by 2004," said Myron Hrycyk, IT Director at Unipart Automotive Logistics. Unipart's implementation of SAP is designed to give the company a 24/7 live operation in all of its geographies, to provide its customers and partners a continual, high performance service environment.

"Over the last three years, since our deployment of SAP, and keeping in mind our mission for continuous improvement, we have realised significant savings and step changes in efficiency. We've driven down our operating costs through the effective use of IT and have streamlined our client's supply chain. We have achieved a reduction in inventory while offering our client's customers high availability," continued Myron Hrycyk. "We've also managed to offer our clients better services despite the adverse circumstances which came about post 9/11. The US became very sensitive about imports resulting in an increased number of checks, which potentially could have seriously slowed down our supply chain.

"One solution was to pump more product in, but this would have negated all of the benefits we had gained thus far. However, because we could demonstrate our rigorous supply chain processes to the US Customs Service, we were able to rapidly obtain the CTPAT accreditation introduced by US Customs as one of the means to combat terrorism. This meant that our shipments to the US went on a fast track through customs and onto Jaguar dealers enabling us to deliver the service performance demanded, while keeping inventory low.