'Listen to customer to sell around the world'
Monday, 19 November 2007, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
Chennai: To make products for the global market, Indian manufacturers should embrace the transformational management system that is based on eliminating waste and listening to customers, says a top US consultancy firm. The new system enables companies to focus on aspects within their control, leverage the gains, listen to customers, study how the consumers actually use their and competitor's products and launch new products incorporating the learning, said Anand Sharma, president and CEO, TBM Consulting Group Inc of the US. Speaking to IANS here, the head of the $53-million turnover firm said he provided advice to manufacturing and service companies on LeanSigma -- a hybrid of lean manufacturing principles and six sigma principles. According to Sharma, twentieth century's scientific management system was focussed on dividing work into small steps that unskilled workers could perform. While the system worked well for big business for a time, globalisation and the Internet have changed the position, he remarked. "No longer does size guarantees protection for an incumbent player. Since access to information is getting wider and deeper, customers have become more demanding, thus changing business dynamics," he added. He said Indian companies could migrate to the transformational management system in three phases. "The first phase is to put the house in order by eliminating waste in the process. The second phase involves synchronisation through supply and demand chain alignment and listening to the customer's voice," he said. The third phase involves translating the customer's voice through value innovation into new products and services that serve markets not catered to by a manufacturer at that point. He said there was no need for Indian companies to be confused about the different process improvement systems like TPM, TQM, Six Sigma and others. "All they need is to take action to cut waste in the production process based on logic and intuition," he said. Once that is done, the companies can create workflow processes eliminating waste, enhance and optimise process capability and finally go for business transformation. According to him, Indian companies are aware of process improvement techniques and are better placed to become the manufacturers for global markets if correct measures are taken. In India, TBM Consulting would focus on manufacturing (auto components, consumer goods), process industries (pharmaceutical units, fast moving consumer goods), and financial services sectors for business.
Source: IANS
siliconindia