Popular business disciplines and technologies inevitably attract attention from vendors outside the fold, like scavenger fish that graze on the microorganisms on a shark’s body. Lean manufacturing is much the same. Companies know that if they identify with the discipline, they stand to capture a fair share of attention, whether it’s deserved or not.

But I thought I’d pretty much seen it all until I came across a press release from a company that connected computer disk defragmentation to lean manufacturing. It rambled on for a bit about the wonders of lean, and then dropped the bombshell: Manufacturers truly interested in running lean should be sure to defrag their computer disks on a regular basis (and they’d be well advised to use this company’s product to do so).

The release went on to mention that “accessing a file in multiple fragments adds considerable time to both employee work and automated processes.”

In the wake of this polished pitch, I’m left to figure out whether this company is a true member of the lean technology community or just a hanger-on looking for some attention by association. After a few minutes, I made up my mind: hanger-on.

What do you think?