Question

Essay: How lean and agile are you?

In this Essay, describe the standard (de facto or prescribed) operations in your own organization. Focusing on the areas you are most familiar, explain to what degree they can be considered lean and/or agile. Comment on how lean/agile the organization or your superiors think they are, as well as how lean/agile you consider them to be. Should they be lean/agile? If not, why not? Could they be made more lean or agile and if so, how?

Do consider lean and agile processes in the context of your own organization and work and critically appraise where your organization in light of these dominant operational paradigms.

Answer 1

LEAN is not excess baggage and AGILE is very quick in output. A lean person is faster than a fat person and so is a lean organisation more agile than a not so lean organisation. LEAN is a very relative term and is industry specific. Certain industries demand you to be lean to be in the competition else you will become redundant. However certain industries/orgnaisations cannot affordto be lean simply because of the fact that thier processe are too humongous to be lean especially turnkey projects wherein there is long gestation periods.

I work for the dabbawalas of Mumbai which is the perfect case study for LEAN and AGILE organisation. The profitability of this social organisation is based on the fact that it is lean without any redundancy of processes. The dabbawalas have been able to cater to the ood necessities of entire Mumbai city by focussing on its core competencies and cutting down on any additional duplicate unwanted process or mechanism. Thus when every morning Mumbai wakes up to the fast life each Mumbaikar is not worried about their hunger because the huge network of dabbawalas deliver in every nook and corner of the city. No wastage is allowed, the process is demand driven i.e customers demand drives the agile process of delivery if dabas by procuring the required demand from the housewives of the city.