Maersk Line is the world’s largest container shipping company. The industry is fierce and margins low, forcing all to fight for market shares by having lowest cost in operations. In 2014, Maersk Line Operations embarked on a journey to change the game towards maintaining cost leadership forever. The cultural transformation, build on Lean principles developed by Toyota Motor Corporation for decades, aimed at developing a learning operations organisations who constantly, and with much higher speed than competitors, would be able to improve the business and drive out waste and cost.
Learning Objective
To see an example of how the hardware of Lean improvement methodologies, e.g. tools, systems, structures, need to be driven by the software part of the transformation, e.g. people, management, leadership, in order to become successful and sustainable. To be able to translate the example into own ways of doing transformation programmes and improve the success rate of the desired impact.
Keywords
Operations, Leadership, Lean Thinking, Excellence, Operating System, Global Standardization, Behavior
Settings
Denmark
Maersk Group, Logistics and Supply Chain, Logistics and Supply Chain, Transportation
2 years (2014 – 2015)
Available Languages
English
IMD case studies are distributed through case clearing houses. In order to browse the collection and purchase copies please visit the links below.
Copyright Information
IMD retains all proprietary interests in its case studies and notes. Without prior written permission, IMD cases and notes may not be reproduced, used, translated, included in books or other publications, distributed in any form or by any means, stored in a database or in other retrieval systems. For additional copyright information related to case studies, please contact Case Services.
This case study is part of a series
