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Case Study

Maersk Line: Becoming the Toyota of shipping (B)

By Carlos Cordon and Michael Leck

13 pages

May 2017

Reference: IMD-7-1823

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)

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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This case study is part of a series

Maersk Line: Becoming the Toyota of shipping (A)
Maersk Line: Becoming the Toyota of shipping (B)

This case study is part of a series

Maersk Line: Becoming the Toyota of shipping (A)
Maersk Line: Becoming the Toyota of shipping (B)

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