Lean six sigma process improvement tools and techniques by donna summers chapter 04

Creating a Customer Focus
Chapter 4

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• From a customer’s standpoint, neither quality, cost
nor schedule always comes first. When customers
evaluate the products and services they receive, they
make trade-offs between all three key factors in order
to maximize value. The challenge that suppliers face
is to provide their customers with the maximum
value, which often is a balancing act between quality,
cost and schedule. 
– Process Improvement Essentials
– The First Among Equals, Quality Digest, June 1999

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Dr. Armand Feigenbaum (1920 - )

– Author of Total Quality Control, one of the
first and most complete texts on quality
assurance

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Feigenbaum’s definition of Quality:
– Quality is a customer determination which
is based on the customer’s actual
experience with the product or service,
measured against his or her requirements
—stated or unstated, conscious or merely
sensed, technically operational or entirely
subjective—always representing a moving
target in a competitive market.
Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• How do we create an unwavering

focus on the customer?
• How do we ensure that our
strategic plans and our leadership
focuses on what is important to the
customer and the market?
Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Effective organizations talk to
customers, translate what their
customers said into appropriate
actions, and align their key
business processes to support
what their customers want.
Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Why bother?
– Business environment is extremely competitive
– Today’s consumers demand quality more than

ever before
– Consumers are more willing to switch from
company to company and not just to get a
better price. They will switch for better service:
reliability, accessibility, courtesy, and so on.

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Why bother?
– It is significantly cheaper to retain existing
customers than to attract new ones.
– Our competitors are gaining and it’s not
getting any easier.

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Creating an organization that has at its
core the ability to sustain an unwavering

focus on the customer is not a task for a
single department within the
organization.
– Involve everyone!

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Lean Six Sigma organizations achieve a
competitive advantage by carefully and
constantly analyzing customers’ needs
and by organizing and operating to
meet these needs the first time and
every time.

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• How will we know what the customer
wants?

–Ask them.

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
• Capture the voice of the
customer
• Use the voice of the customer
to drive changes in the way you
do business.
– Quality Function Deployment
Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
•

Steps to perform a QFD
1. Determine the voice of the customer
•

What does the customer want

2. Have the customer rank the relative
importance of his or her wants
3. Have the customer evaluate your
company against competitors
4. Determine hoe the wants will be met
– How does the company provide the wants
Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
5. Determine the direction of improvement
for the technical requirements
6. Determine the operational goals for the
technical requirements
7. Determine the relationship between each
of the customer wants and the technical
requirements
8. Determine the correlation between the
technical requirements
Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,

Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.


Creating a Customer Focus
9. Compare the technical performance with
that of competitors
10. Determine the column weights
11. Add regulatory and/or internal
requirements
12. Analyze the QFD matrix.

Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques
Donna C. Summers

© 2011 Pearson Higher Education,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.