LEAN PRODUCTION

''Lean production'', or rather ''lean management'', is an intellectual approach consisting of a system of measures and methods which when ta ken all together have the potential to bring about a lean and therefor e particularly competitive state in a company. The main fields of acti vity concerned are product development, the chain of supply, shop floo r management and to a lesser extent after-sales service. The portabili ty of the concept in the light of changing circumstances can be called into question, but it nevertheless provides food for thought for the restructuring of industries whose production processes are out of date . As a contrast to this, a brief introduction is given to the fractal approach, which is based on the self-organisation of goal-oriented cor porate units and which enables solutions which are ideally suited to e ach individual area to be integrated into a dynamic structure. This do es not mean copying existing solutions but exploiting one's own partic ular strengths.