|
 |
Customer Manufacturing Update |  |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dear Mitchell, Here is your July Customer Manufacturing Update. Some people resist the use of business process methods because they believe that it is restricting to the artistic side of many business activities. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review discussed this as well. This month we address this misconception.
If you have friends or colleagues who would
appreciate receiving this Update, feel free to
forward
a copy to them using the "Forward e-mail" link at the
bottom of the page.
What is a process? A set of activities that turn inputs into outputs. What is a good process? A process that does what it is supposed to do when it is supposed to do it, reliably. What is a great process? One that is effective and optimally efficient. Are there business activities that are not amenable to process? Some think so, we think not. In this month's white paper, we look at how to use effective process management to improve the performance of even so called "artistic" processes.
Experts run around promoting the latest and greatest ways for people to spread the word about their product or service. We all know that people talking about us and our products or services helps. And, of course, The Internet has added a new twist to how to leverage all that. Much has been written over the last few years of another new trend, which is to have "paid" endorsers ask for the product in a public setting. This technique as been used with alcoholic beverages in bars. Getting the "cool" people to order a specific brand to creates buzz, and, ultimately, sales. Turns out this idea is not even close to new. In the new book, The King of Vodka, author Linda Himelstein tells the story of Pyotr Smirnov. In the later part of the 1800s, Smirnov used this exact same idea to help grow Smirnov into the leading vodka. Well, not exactly the same idea, but close. Turns out Smirnov didn't bother with cool people. He hired panhandlers and paid them to fan out and "demand Smirnov vodka" at Moscow bars. Sales boomed. Within eight years Smirnov was selling over $7M (in today's currency) in vodka. We've all heard and perhaps forgotten the adage that there is "nothing new under the sun." And perhaps we all best remember that as we look hard for something new, a great old idea may be overlooked.
The June 8th issue of Forbes has as its cover story the new breed of American car companies. Unlike the old days, in which car companies were vertically integrated manufacturing enterprises, the new breed is more akin to a fabless semiconductor firm. The fabless semiconductor company doesn't own any manufacturing capacity; rather it designs semiconductors to fill a market need and outsources the manufacturing to a manufacturing specialist. The capital advantages to this approach are obvious and so are the market speed advantages. What seemed so unusual about the fabless semiconductor companies when they appeared years ago was that semiconductor manufacturing had always seemed like the perfect example of an industry that had to remain vertically integrated, since the manufacturing of semiconductors was so critical a competence. In the case of the new car companies, for good reason, they have elected to also keep design in-house. Although the design function is really more of an integrating engineering function than pure design-from scratch. Take a proven engine from GM, drive train from another supplier, integrate them with some lesser unique elements and outsource the manufacturing to spare auto manufacturing capacity somewhere in the world, and you have a late 20th century company, in a turn of the century industry, finally appearing in the early 21st century. The essence of the new American car company will be the forward-looking identification of profitable market needs, the financially and technically competent specification of a product to fill that need, the management to drive it all to happen, and the delivery of those products to the market with appropriately designed channels. In other words, the new American car company will be a Marketing company ... and not a whole lot else.
We were reminded again that what gets measured gets managed and if you don't have metrics alignment within your team, you can end up at cross purposes. In the airline industry, gate agents are measured against on-time performance. We are not really sure what flight attendants are measured on, but it's not on time performance. This disconnect was evident on a recent flight Mitch took. As he was boarding the plane the "purser" (that would be the lead flight attendant on that flight), who was clearly needing to assert his authority over the gate agent, by reminding him that he was the "...purser on this flight," was reprimanding the gate agent for allowing Coach class customers to board before he (the purser) had given permission. (The fact that this reprimand was going on in public is a whole other conversation we could have with you.) The purser noted that he had "graciously" allowed the gate agent to board the First Class passengers before the plane was completely cleaned, but that the gate agent had clearly overstepped his bounds by then boarding the Coach passengers before the purser had granted permission. Such behavior was not to be tolerated, and he wanted the gate agent to know this, even though the cleaners had left the plane before any Coach passengers had tried to board. I understand the issue of complicating the cleaning process and the boarding process, which is not the issue here anyway, since the cleaners had left the plane. The gate agent was focused on his metric: getting the plane off on time. The flight attendant is not measured on that and has no empathy for that situation. Results: Teammates at odds with each other due to differing metrics of performance. Are your people focused on differing metrics, which may in fact be in conflict with each other? How is this impacting your customers? And what about employee morale?
We appreciate any feedback you can provide to help us make sure these Updates give you value each month. Feel free to respond to this e-mail with any comments or suggestions for future topics or ways we can make these Customer Manufacturing Updates more valuable to you.
Thank you for your interest, and if we can provide
any
additional assistance in sales, marketing, strategy, or
innovation to help you increase your sales,
let us know.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
