silicon.com has an article highlighting British Airways move towards LEAN Tech, a concepts which seems to be gaining ground these days. Below are excerpts from the article:

British Airways (BA) is borrowing a manufacturing concept originally developed by Toyota for the automotive sector in the 1970s to make its technology more "lean" for the future.BA CEO Willie Walsh claims "lean" technology and processes will be one of the keys to simplifying the business, cutting costs and improving customer service for the airline in the future.

The idea behind the 'lean' concept is to design single, repeatable processes and only add complexity back in where it adds value to the customer which they are willing to pay for.Tools and techniques include 'value stream mapping', which is a graphical way of working out where there is waiting and excess inventory in a process, and a 'just in time' inventory strategy, which ensures new stock is only ordered when it reaches reorder level, saving on storage space and costs.

BA CIO Paul Coby said the new approach is about getting the processes right before implementing the technology and working with the people who carry out the processes every day, such as baggage handlers and customer service agents, to do this.

He said: "To do a lot of things you don't need new IT systems. Maybe you are not using the existing ones very well. Sort those things out and then design your IT."

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Prashanth Rai