About Lean

The eChain Lean Initiative is our premier service offering that improves business working capital and reduces waste and costs of day-to-day operations by identifying and fixing operational inefficiencies that cause you pain and cost money.  The typical engagement includes the eChain Business Performance Assessment, mutually agreed target areas and performance goals and less than one year timeframe.  We even guarantee your results.

Business Performance Assessment

The eChain Assessment is an external 3-4 week analysis of your company’s performance. Our business and technology experts use a unique methodology derived from Lean Six Sigma, SCOR and VICS to identify and quantify the source and root cause of excess spend and waste.  The analysis is qualitative, quantitative and cross-functional. Included are interviews with key employees and deep process and statistical analysis.  Findings are documented and presented to the business stakeholders.

Lean Operations Initiative

The eChain Assessment is the first step in Lean Operations Initiative which is an 11 month business and systems improvement engagement that has a 10:100 Investment Yield and are guaranteed.  We provide any and all resources necessary as part of a fixed-price engagement to ensure that we meet our performance objectives.

Lean Value Proposition

10:100 yield means $100,000 at eChain Technology yields over $1,000,000 in net income to your business by the end of the engagement.  An engagement to meet a $1 million performance target would cost you $8,000 per month for less than one year.  This is less cost than one senior full-time employee with guaranteed results!

Quantify the Excess Cost Opportunity

Using our proprietary tools, we can tell how much excess cost your company is carrying in excess inventory, lost sales, etc.  We can determine what cost and net income impacts can be expected by implementing the recommended improvements.  This is a high level ROI estimate that we calculate in a few hours using your information.

The subsequent activities determine the specific actions that are needed to deliver the expected cost savings.  We use the low hanging fruit method to identify and fix the easiest problems first.  These are issues that are easy and inexpensive to fix, but have the highest value return.

Your company profits are threatened by redundant activities, excess costs, inefficient processes and short-term corrective actions. 

In the best of times, corporations and large businesses are established and run as a group of independently managed business units.  Each unit has a set of performance metrics that, when met or exceeded, are often at cross-purposes to company profitability.

In challenging economic times, the cumulative effects of these corporate inefficiencies can be catastrophic.

The typical approach to corporate cost cutting is a dramatic reduction of inventory and employees to push down costs – an approach that hurts net income in the short term and destroys long-term viability. 

The solution is a targeted series of improvements that are orchestrated  to work together to enhance existing system capabilities and pull down excess inventory and costs while improving service levels and the core business.  Results in as little as 3 months can increase net income even when sales are declining.