Today, with increased global competition and the advent of the Internet, customers have more influence than ever before. Customers are demanding greater product flexibility, smaller, more frequent deliveries and higher product quality-all, of course, at a lower price with the same service level expected from a mass-produced, off-the-shelf product.

Manufacturers are continuing to become more customer-centric in their approach to the market. This philosophy and lean manufacturing go hand in hand. In order to meet customer demands, manufacturers not only have to concentrate on taking out non-value added processes internally, they also need to ensure they know exactly what their customer wants and when they want it.

To this end, manufacturers are widening the scope and focus of lean manufacturing to encompass all processes that contribute to the bottom line. Lean thinking is now increasingly being applied to all areas within the organization-from sales and marketing to engineering and production through to finance and post sale service. The true benefits of lean thinking will only be fully realized when the entire enterprise adopts lean ideology.

Epicor Vantage enables enterprises to attain this goal.