Lean front end at Crane Pumps streamlines customer-facing process
Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
"We're 'leaning' front-end activities to eliminate nonvalue-add and bottlenecks," says Regina Fitzsimmons, a team leader and "lean black belt" for transactional processes at Crane Pumps & Systems, Piqua, Ohio.
There's a reason for that. Crane Pumps grew rapidly by acquisition and includes nine businesses and 13 brands, along with eight sales forces, nine customer service teams, and five business management systems.
Taking orders and answering questions required customer service to reach out to sales, engineering, and manufacturing. Questions about different brands often entailed contacting several different sales teams.
"In the past, there were more than 50 steps in the customer care process—involving too many people, hand-offs, and delays," Fitzsimmons says. "Using a lean front-end solution means three steps, and questions get answered right away."
Crane Pumps uses front-end sales and service software—the Lean Front-End Solution—from BigMachines. For manufacturers of complex products, it integrates with back-end systems to offer a single point of access for online product selection, configuration, quoting, and ordering, says Godard Abel, president and CEO of BigMachines.
"Companies have expended a great deal of effort on lean manufacturing, and now want to streamline customer-facing processes," Abel says. "A Web-based system delivers high security levels, ease of use, and a real-time view of data. A virtual work cell gives users tools, knowledge, and data—without e-mails, voice messages, or all that back-and-forth."
Automating the order process and integrating it with the legacy ERP system, ASK MANMAN, means orders for stock items are released to the shop floor in two hours instead of two days.
Distributors use the Web portal to check inventory levels, lead times, and even bills of material. They order pumps or parts, monitor order status, and track orders via links to shipping companies' Web sites.
Fitzsimmons concludes, "We know how other companies conduct business, and making product information available so distributors get answers and place orders 24/7 puts us miles ahead."
