Abstract
In our globalized economic system, industrial production has to step outside the boundaries of individual enterprises and single production units to be internationally competitive. Thus, new organizational approaches are needed to be able to co-ordinate the work of the different production and business locations. An approach based on Axiomatic Design Principles for the modelling of lean organizational systems is proposed for the efficient coordination of geographically distributed co-operative production and business units. The model has been developed in cooperation with internationally active companies in different business sectors. Thus, the practicability of the theoretic approach has been successfully proven.