ABSTRACT
This chapter helps to understand manufacturer supply chain using a value stream map. It discusses why manufacturer enterprise resource planning system may be making the problem worse rather than better. The chapter examines the key root causes of poor delivery performance. It recognizes whether manufacturer supply chain is not functioning correctly. The chapter provides some reassurance to the sales team that their new Lean project was going to focus on addressing the business's chronic delivery problems. It discusses six reasons why companies have too much stock and cannot deliver. The reasons are: the customer cannot forecast accurately, long lead times, big batch sizes and big shipment quantities, material shortages, poor factory performance and poor warehouse and logistics practices. These six reasons explain the chaos seen in supply chains. In turn, this chaos is the reason for failure to deliver to customers on time, in full.
