It is critical to understand a suppliers plant

Understanding a plant is different to understanding the supplier, particularly when the plant is part of a much larger global conglomerate. Whilst much of this information can be obtained from published information on the web for small to medium sized suppliers who only have one plant, much of it cannot. This is particularly true if a suppliers future order book is full (no capacity) or very underutilised (leading to inability to ramp up quickly). The A4 tool is designed to capture key information and, in Hermetica's opinion, should be collected at least once a quarter by anyone who visits the plant (whether that be purchasing, engineering, quality or whoever).

Identifying opportunities in the value stream

Muda, the famous (in lean circles) Japanese term for waste. Pioneered by Toyota, and extended by many to address most value chains, techniques to identify and eliminate waste have become plentiful. If cost is to be eliminated, it can be very useful to apply these techniques, with the essential input of cross-functional teams , to identify opportunities to take out cost.

The techniques can be adapted to most problems

Hermetica has applied variants of this technique to whole industry supply chains (upstream oil & gas), IT services and hardware, and social care services.