Costs and Agile Procurement

Abstract

Business processes largely determine the costs also in procurement organizations. This chapter examines in detail the methods of lean thinking. It introduces the principle of leanness and looks in detail at the main tools available to eliminate waste. The chapter discusses value stream mapping, kaizen, kanban, just-in-time, SIPOC, autonomation, and heijunka. It stresses in particular the importance of improvements in the lean thinking method itself, such as Lean Six Sigma, lean and digitize, and leagile. The latter method is a combination of lean thinking and agile methodologies. It allows for a bimodal mode of management and operations of procurement, applying the best of both methods to different parts of the organization processes.