Lean production

“Lean production”, or rather “lean management”, is an intellectual approach consisting of a system of measures and methods which when taken all together have the potential to bring about a lean and therefore particularly competitive state in a company. The main fields of activity concerned are product development, the chain of supply, shop floor management and to a lesser extent after-sales service. The portability of the concept in the light of changing circumstances can be called into question, but it nevertheless provides food for thought for the restructuring of industries whose production processes are out of date. As a contrast to this, a brief introduction is given to the fractal approach, which is based on the self-organisation of goal-oriented corporate units and which enables solutions which are ideally suited to each individual area to be integrated into a dynamic structure. This does not mean copying existing solutions but exploiting one's own particular strengths.