A METHODICAL APPROACH FOR LEAN TRANSFORMATION FOR FOOD COMPANIES

In today's competition, for businesses to survive or supply chains to succeed, they must be sufficiently capable of continuously meeting or exceeding the needs and wants of their customers and also cope with the constant changes in the marketplace. In other words, it is all about staying or converting to lean, the aim of which is to meet customer demand instantaneously, with perfect quality and no waste. By reviewing literature and looking to situation of many businesses, we developed a methodical approach for lean transformation (MALT) having the following characteristics: holistic (inclusive, by addressing all the necessary factors for change and encompasses all relevant aspects of an organization), adaptive to several industries and business scenarios, and also systematic with sufficiently clear and explicit steps for the execution of lean transformation. The MALT model proposes a way how businesses or supply chains can effectively and efficiently be transformed to lean states in relatively shorter time, with minimum cost and people resistance, better and sustainable change in culture and maximum participation. A case research was adopted with multiple sources of data: reports, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews as well as participant observation.