Supporting collaboration in the development and management of lean supply networks

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the appropriate information and communication technology can act as a catalyst in the development and operations management of lean supply networks; not by automating tasks and procedures, but by providing the enabling infrastructure required for structuring difficult problems and issues arising at inter-organisational boundaries and for taming the social complexity of their resolution processes. Towards this end, we present the design rationale and the functionalities of Co-LEAN, which is an integrated suite of software tools developed by the authors for the design and management of lean supply networks.