Shoestring Marketing: 'Lean manufacturing' tightening production, sales efforts

"Lean Manufacturing" is finding a place in the production process.

Lean Manufacturing is built on the concept of Kaizen Japanese for continuous improvement. The Kaizen process is initiated with the formation of study teams made up of production-line workers, managers, supervisors and administrative, sales and marketing functionaries who analyze existing workflow and identify weaknesses and barriers to quality and productivity. The teams then design, and set up prototype lines/systems and practice the changes before they are introduced onto the floor. Prominent U.S. companies such as Maytag and Pella Windows are committed Kaizen disciples.

Introduction to Kaizen

I recently watched Kaizen in operation when I visited the U.S. division of the world-wide WIKA Company, a leader in the manufacturing of pressure and temperature measurement devices for process control.

According to Michael Gerster, executive vice president and general manager, WIKA was forced to consider Kaizen techniques because of inefficiencies that were accumulating in spite of its adoption of accepted manufacturing processes. There was also increasing pressure on employees to perform and excel with concomitant friction and fatigue.

WIKA ran its first Kaizen event in June 2001 and year-to-date it has conducted 14 team events around manufacturing, business processes and quality improvement. The results have been impressive productivity up 15 percent to 30 percent depending upon the cell; work-in-process reduction of up to 95 percent; compression in lead time to minutes rather than days or weeks; floor space savings of 30 percent to 50 percent; improved quality, safety and ergonomics; development of standard work practices in the business/administrative functions; and, most importantly, a noticeable lift in employee motivation and morale.

But WIKA management has had to address potential pitfalls to the process. According to Gerster, Kaizen can only succeed long term if it's driven down from the top. The operating environment must also possess a culture that accepts change, runs with a sense of urgency, maintains a strong desire to sustain after the initial success and is driven by constant hunger.

Where will WIKA go from here? Gerster wants to turn the whole operation into a lean manufacturing showcase. "This is not a one-time shot," he said.

The game plan is to harvest build-to-order capabilities to reduce the inventory of finished goods while simultaneously shortening lead times. At that point, the company can then begin involving customers and suppliers in the supply chain. Assuming all this can be pulled off, Gerster will use "lean" as a competitive advantage to outperform the competition, deliver better-than-average financial returns to the parent company and use the transition period to enhance employee involvement and motivation.

Said Gerster, "We were batch victims. Now we're lean disciples and waste eliminators. The Kaizen approach has had the effect of sweeping away all the dust accumulated over the years."

Sales, marketing applications

When 173 chief executive officers were polled and asked, "Are your salespeople calling on the right customers, at the right time, with the right offer?" 99.3 percent responded, "I don't know." Which isn't surprising. Sales and marketing are still the last bastions of protected turf, limited management scrutiny and lack of accountability.

Unfortunately, the important lessons learned and the gains in effectiveness and efficiency derived from lean manufacturing have not been successfully translated to the sales and marketing environments. And, it's understandable. Leading sales trainer Chuck Reaves, of XXI Associates, makes the point that, "Sales involves people doing business with people, not people doing activities with machines and processes. Sales is perceived to be more of an art form than a science. Yet, ironically, sales is virtually a pure science and, as such, is both measurable and predictable."

If Reaves is correct, the disciplines of Kaizen can easily be applied to the sales and marketing functions, resulting in significant increases in effectiveness and bottom line results.

How might a sales team apply Kaizen techniques? According to Reaves, companies interested in applying "lean" techniques to the sales and marketing functions can begin the journey by:

asking whether a certain step is necessary, thereby reducing habitual behavior;

determining how necessary steps can be done better, thereby demanding continuous quality improvement;

asking who else could perform the step if necessary, thereby building team performance while improving results; and

determining how each step can be done better, faster and cheaper, thereby forcing sales and marketing personnel to start focusing on cost of sales.

"Like the folks in manufacturing who examine each individual element associated with building the product, professional sales and marketing people are going to have to sit down and apply the same rigorous scrutiny to their own processes," Reaves said.