Customer connectivity gains are evidenced in lean manufacturing deployments
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
Manufacturers in five nations ranked "defining customer needs" as the leading catalyst for innovation in their value chains, according to results of the third annual Productivity Survey conducted by Durham, N.C.-based TBM Consulting Group, released in September.
Says Bill Schwartz, senior partner and managing director of TBM's LeanSigma Institute, "More companies are looking for ways to capture customer needs. Many are collecting data from Web sites, warranty claims, and customer feedback cards, and trying to organize the data in some format so they don't lose it. It is a rising trend over the last couple of years."
Survey respondents from midsize to large companies say they are putting greater focus on translating captured needs into innovation: in the U.S., 63 percent; the U.K., 59 percent; Germany, 58 percent; Brazil, 67 percent; and Mexico, 68 percent.
At least a quarter of respondents, by region, cite productivity gains of 10 percent to 20 percent over the previous year. The leading causes of productivity improvement include lean continuous-improvement programs, and industrial engineering-based changes in procedures and workflow.
Some companies also are exploring ways to capture unarticulated customer needs, Schwartz adds. Newton, Iowa-based Maytag, for example, has engineers visiting customers' homes to observe their appliance use and discern design features that would make them more appealing.
"It's recognition on the part of all manufacturers of the history of launching products, where they overestimate products' potential by relying too much on marketing input alone—and hear a big thud when they hit the market," says Schwartz. n
Customer-connectivity comparisons across countries
| Issue | U.S. | U.K. | Germany | Brazil | Mexico |
| Source: TBM Consulting Group |
|||||
| Customer-connection effort | 60% | 61% | 78% | 65% | 55% |
| Improved agility effort | 58% | 62% | 51% | 67% | 55% |
| Productivity gain over 2004 | 28% | 25% | 42% | 26% | 46% |
| Lean-based method | 64% | 46% | 34% | 59% | 55% |
| Industrial engineering-based method | 21% | 20% | 45% | 23% | 20% |
