Title : Head of Technology Transfer

Organism : University of Wolverhampton School of Computing

Country : UNITED KINGDOM

Postal Address : Lichfield street WV1 1SB WOLVERHAMPTON

Phone : 44 1 902 32 14 02

 Auto Lean

AutoLean is a project with the aimof introducing Internet communications to a sample of 20 or so small companies (SMES) in the automotive supply base, geographically based in the West Midlands of the UK.

This example of the application of "Lean Thinking" to information flowing between supply chain tiers used commercially available technology to help enable global standards of competitiveness to be achieved. Funding for the project was provided by European Regional Development Fund administered through Birmingham and Solihull Training and Enterprise Council's Accelerate Programme with Rover Group instrumental in launching the project.

The participating SMEs were provided with comprehensive training and technical support during the introduction of the Internet to their business, and on-going technical support and business advise on its use for the twelve month duration of the project. Key SME business processes were recorded via on-site interviews. Analysis of these processes identified the nature of inter-firm communication and determined the opportunities for introducing Internet communications to achieve operational improvements and cost savings through using time based process analysis.

The présentation describes in some detail the organisation and implementation of the Autolean project The author identifies some of the major outcomes, results and observations arising from the project and attempts to suggest how these specific outcomes might apply to the wider automotive supply chain in general.