 | |||
|
|
||
| |||
| |||
| |
|
Home > Manufacturing ERP/SCM/IT News > Innovation and operational expertise boost customer satisfaction |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Manufacturing ERP/SCM/IT News: |
|
||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Toyota Motor Corp. was the top automaker in a recent ranking of supply chain operations, coming in seventh overall. But the Japanese company didn't get there simply because of its cars' sleek designs and cool features. What vaulted Toyota past competitors like Honda Motor Corp. and BMW Group was its ability to integrate product innovation with operations excellence to deliver complete customer value, according to Michael Burkett, an analyst with Boston-based AMR Research, which compiled the supply chain rankings. "If you think about a customer wanting products and services from a company, some of that is related to the product itself -- the features of the product, the design of the product," Burkett said. "But oftentimes what's just as important to them is how they get it, how they're supported, is it the right price."
Without proper forecasting, an efficient supply chain and an ear to customer needs, in other words, even the best product in the world will fail, Burkett said. In a follow-up report, Burkett outlined five specific areas where Toyota excels -- areas that other manufacturers, he said, would be wise to emulate. Listen -- really listen -- to the customer Toyota goes to great lengths to listen to its customers. Beyond customer surveys, Toyota actually sends representatives into the field to spend time with customers to understand "their lifestyles and produce innovations that affect their entire experiences," Burkett wrote. By spending time with its actual pickup truck customers, for example, Toyota realized that many of them used the trucks not just to haul things but also as an office of sorts. So Toyota designed larger dashboards where drivers could store clipboards, maps and other papers. Companies that go the extra mile to understand -- and then meet -- their customers' needs are more likely to hold on to those customers, Burkett said. Achieve active governance Silos often exist between research and development (R&D) and product development departments on the one hand and product line owners on the other. The result is a lack of accountability for product success from either side. In this scenario, product line owners sometimes take a "hands-off approach and say, 'We'll take whatever R&D gives us, but if it doesn't work, it's their fault,' " Burkett said. What product line owners should do, he said, is establish active governance procedures so innovation is not treated as a separate function. At Toyota, for example, chief engineers oversee the business case for individual product lines but also have the technical skills to engage R&D when experimenting with new features. Other companies that scored high on AMR's supply chain rankings, like Procter and Gamble, actually require product line owners to achieve a certain percentage of revenue from new products. "That puts them on the hook to bring new innovation into their product lines," Burkett said. Integrate teams with clear goals Companies that successfully bridge the divide between product innovation and operations excellence do so by bridging the divide between internal and external work groups, Burkett said. "Supply chain and manufacturing, for example, (should be) involved and integrated at the very beginning of product development," he said. "And they're not just being given a design and asked to go quote it, but they actually understand what the customer wants and are able to offer suggestions." To ensure that all departments are working together, Toyota creates an Obeya, or war room, at the beginning of the product development process where cross-functional teams meet regularly to coordinate operations, Burkett said. Toyota also gives workers the freedom to be creative. Rather than asking R&D to simply create a product that meets certain specifications, the group is given an overall objective and has the latitude to try various solutions. Learn from past mistakes It may seem like a no-brainer, but not enough companies learn from their mistakes, according to Burkett. Not so at Toyota. "Toyota has institutionalized the process of capturing lessons learned through test and experimentation," he wrote. The Japanese automaker creates a number of prototypes to meet the demands of each project, and those that are not ultimately successful don't end up on the cutting room floor but in Toyota's institutional memory. "Toyota has a very disciplined process for comparing (design) alternatives, testing them and capturing the data that they've learned, and they put that in a place where it's retrievable," Burkett said. "So they can reuse that knowledge when they go on to a new design project." Let business processes drive technology decisions Finally, Burkett said, technology deployments must be driven by business requirements to bring the best value to customers. Companies should focus on the business process first, then decide whether to buy or build software to support the process. Rather than just looking for that "silver bullet" commercial technology, he said, companies like Toyota use a mix of homegrown and off-the-shelf software in a way that maximizes their competitive advantages. "The best companies seem to be willing either to build their own or take a commercial application and make sure it adapts to their differentiating capabilities," Burkett said, "as opposed to changing that capability to become more standard with the rest of the industry, because that just removes their differentiation."
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |  |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |
|
|
About Us | Contact Us | For Advertisers | For Business Partners | Site Index | RSS |
|
|
||
|
|||||||
