Whole system thinking takes a view of the company’s manufacturing system and associated costs as a whole, rather than by functional department. This new way of thinking empowers factory managers to accept higher costs on low value items that may be associated with a given functional department, to produce substantial overall cost savings throughout the production cycle. Companies engaged in Lean Manufacturing are, fundamentally, utilizing new financial decision-making (“whole system”) approaches and new powerful cost drivers (., reduced flow days) to eliminate waste. In other words, Lean strives to optimize the entire system, with a focus on.
