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Lean Manufacturing for Lean Marketing |
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Womack, Jones and Roos illustrate how the Japanese auto maker's use of lean manufacturing, also enables a radically different, lean marketing approach to designing for customer satisfaction. The authors term Western marketing as a "push" system. Here, car buyers are pushed into buying with aggressive advertising, discounts and high-pressure "massaging" in the dealerships. Western sales people, with expertise in sales rather than product knowledge, work out a deal with a (poorly understood) consumer, often through intense haggling. Once the consumer buys it, at most they will receive a questionnaire asking them vague questions about their satisfaction. Thereafter, they will find themselves on a couple of more mailing lists, reminding them to stick with that particular brand, and to get the car serviced at the dealership. In the eyes of Western auto makers, this consumer is now a "buyer" -- past tense.
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By contrast, the Japanese lean producers use a "pull" system in their marketing efforts. There, each auto maker has five or six different "channels". A channel is simply the name of a dealership, each of which offers a different slice of different kinds of products. For example, one channel may sell family vehicles, and another may sell luxury models. The main thing differentiating one channel from another is its appeal to different types of customers, who upon buying a car become owners (not just buyers). Because every product in all of the assembler's channels are clearly identified as their own, the purpose of the channels is not to establish brand identity (as is the purpose of sales divisions here). Rather, it is to establish a direct link between manufacturing and the customer, who is constantly studied, surveyed and consulted, in order to make even better cars, vans and trucks in the future.
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Womack, James P., Jones, Daniel T., Roos, Daniel. The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. Harper Perennial. New York. 1990.
This book is the result of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Motor Vehicle Program -- the most comprehensive examination of the global auto industry ever undertaken. The authors use hard data and intimately informed insight to cut through the myths and misinformation which cloud the common understanding of good manufacturing practice.
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Even though this book focuses on the automobile industry, the model of Lean Production -- which is called "Japan's secret weapon" -- can be applied to any enterprise in any industry. Womack, Jones and Roos bring western readers up to speed with the Japanese concepts of Kaizen (continuous, incremental improvement) and Kanban (just-in-time production), claiming and proving that Lean Production is a superior method for manufacturing excellence.
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