Open Access Conference Proceedings

In today's globalized world the cooperation and close connection between enterprises reduce the mutual boundaries between them. Competitiveness of enterprises is nowadays a value-added challenge rather than a question of “how much to produce” or “how much to buy”. Lean production methods and supply partnerships allow enterprises “to produce more with less” resources, costs and time. Supply chain networks integrate, coordinate, and manage the movement of goods, materials and information from the supplier to the end customer. At the heart of these business-to-business relationships is a key managing enterprise (key link) that guides individual flows and maintains linkages between connected enterprises with a perspective of long-term partnership based on cooperation and mutual exchange of information. The paper deals with the definition of a key enterprise of the supply chain and its role and importance for the lean production methods. The authors present the results of the questionnaire survey, which was focused on the use of methods of lean production in enterprises from the perspective of enterprises position in the supply chain. The results show that there is not a positive correlation in the use of lean manufacturing methods between the enterprises identified as key enterprise and dependent enterprise. This conclusion applies to both new and traditional lean production methods. The most used are the CIP and EDI. The lean supply chain can be created regardless of the existence of a key enterprise through workgroups, virtual organisations or consulting companies which support the coordination role.

Keywords: Supply chain, key enterprise, lean production

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