Karthikeyan Shanmugam graduated from department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering in Fall 2003.  He also has a B. E. (Mechanical) from Madurai Kamaraj University, India, 1999

Thesis title: Supply Chain Partnerships To Achieve A Lean Extended Enterprise.

(Fall 2003)

Abstract

Supply chain management aims at producing the right product, at the right quantities and delivering it to the end customer at the right time, through a series of linked firms. Lean manufacturing aims at reducing cost and waste at each step of the production process. Several benefits can be achieved if the lean principles can be extended to the entire supply chain to achieve a lean extended enterprise. To achieve this objective the whole network of companies should be linked through strong strategic partnerships, so that they can work as single team for the reduction of waste in the entire chain and to achieve mutual profits. Developing a prescriptive methodology to achieve this goal is the primary objective of this thesis. A survey was conducted to identify the strengths and weaknesses of current supply chain partnerships, and an IDEF0 prescriptive methodology was proposed to overcome the handicaps in the current relationships and to create a lean extended enterprise through strategic partnerships.