Abstract
The lean approach is an idealizing improvement approach that has an enormous impact in the
field of Operations Management. The approach is basically very process oriented and there was
less attention first for planning and control, this being the profession of dealing with all kind of
non-ideal manufacturing and supply-chain restrictions. During the last years, however, planning
and control have been integrated in the lean approach, leading to the concept of lean planning.
Cyclic schedules form an important element of lean planning, certainly in the (semi-) process
industry. The concept of lean planning is rather influential in practice already. This paper
describes a lean planning case study in a semi-process production plant. The case study in itself
is interesting and illustrates well how lean planning can be applied. The case study shows also
that the effect of lean planning or, more specifically, the effect of a cyclic schedule cannot be
isolated from the effect of supporting organizational measures and from the effect of the whole
improvement process. And these effects are very context dependent. The case study helps to
articulate the complexity of developing the lean approach into a theory of production
management and production planning. It shows that it is impossible to predict the performance
of the “leaned” system.