Eastman Kodak Co. Benchmark
Kodak is the world’s foremost imaging innovator. George Eastman put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers in 1888. In so doing, he made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible to nearly everyone. Since that time, the Eastman Kodak Company has led the way with an abundance of new products and processes to make photography simpler, more useful and more enjoyable. With sales of $13.3 billion in 2006, the company is committed to a digitally oriented growth strategy focused on helping people better use meaningful images and information in their life and work. (Kodak, 2007)
Per the director of research and development for Eastman Kodak Mark Schneider, says that the plan is not just to cut direct costs. When the Outsourcing Institute asked companies to name the top three reasons for going extramural, costs showed up on 64% of the lists. But improve company focus, access to world-class capabilities, and free resources for other purposes were each mentioned more than 40% of the time (Forbes.com, 2007). Often, a different objective is to minimize the time and distance between a supplier's parts bin and a retailer's cash register, dropping the amount of manufactured goods inventoried along the supply chain. Whatever the reasons, unless a company has a plan in place and a marketplace that will soak up enough output so that it can function at optimum rates and costs, the burden of proof has shifted from why outsource? To why make it here?
Eastman Kodak has realized savings in the millions in transportation and inventory costs by implementing lean logistics. Kodak starting developing lean logistics in 2002 by establishing a cross docks to improve the flow of materials moving from its sup ...