Oracle goes big on lean business thinking

Extended business lean thinking is Oracle’s latest big push for the manufacturing sector globally. The software giant has launched an initiative that brings together existing and new applications along with consultancy, all aimed at stripping waste and time out of operations throughout businesses and their extended enterprise, and moving to demand-pull. Simon Pollard, vice president of manufacturing for Oracle in EMEA, says that with the trend for taking lean thinking beyond the manufacturing four walls, Oracle is offering systems, diagnostics and lean methodologies to underpin lean initiatives “throughout design, sourcing, procurement, warehousing, financials, the supply chain – also lean IT.” And he adds: “Lean manufacturing in Oracle goes back a number of years, especially with our applications for flow-based manufacturing proven in various places around the world.” But this is a lot more than line balancing, shop floor scheduling and the rest. It’s tantamount to a realignment for Oracle, bringing together everything from its latest Internet-based PLM (product lifecycle management) to project management, activity-based costing, portfolio management, business intelligence, global accounting and so on. Says Pollard: “Lean business thinking now covers everything from ‘cradle to grave’. It extends the footprint of lean, with supporting technology, and over the next 12 to 36 months it will go through more change.” Oracle believes that many in discrete manufacturing have been on the lean journey, but need to go further. “They’re still dealing with information about products, processes and resources that aren’t real time.” And he’s not just referring to machine efficiencies, changeover times and tooling management on the shop floor, but supply chain issues, order processing and the rest. He also points out that technology is constantly changing what’s possible – referring, for example, to RFID tagging, machine-to-machine communications. “It’s all about removing what becomes waste and inefficiency … with an umbrella approach and closed loop processes.” Citing lean thinking in supply chains, he says appropriate technology there includes “web hubs revisited, but providing a collaborative platform for suppliers, contractors and customers, with centralised views of the information in real time, automated transaction processing, event management and so on.” Robert Azavedo, Oracle director of manufacturing and lean guru, adds that the cost and waste savings aren’t just around production and supply chains, but also design, with all the implications in terms of time to market, reduction of travel, workflow around development sign-off and so on. And the thinking extends further than that, covering structured and unstructured information management via Oracle’s collaboration suite, with document management, knowledge management, file, data and voicemail management, and so on. It’s the whole Oracle Internet connectivity piece – so Oracle eBusiness suite and Collaboration suite realigned to reflect the requirements of lean business thinking. “All of the products are available now,” says Azavedo. “We’re re-positioning what we have… And it’s a journey for us too. We’ve saved $1bn [through Oracle’s ‘daily business close’ initiative], and even when you pro rata that down to smaller companies, there are still substantial figures to be saved.”