Marketing Strategies - The Impact of Lean Thinking & the Lean Enterprise on Marketing
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Japanese car maker Toyota introduced lean principles to automobile manufacturing in the years after World War II. Companies aiming for improved quality and profitability continue to examine, adopt and adapt these principles today. While the greatest bottom-line benefits are likely found in manufacturing, the lean culture intent affects all aspects of a company's business. Marketing in particular presents unique challenges when incorporating lean principles.
Product Value
The first principle of lean, at its base level, is to build only what is needed. In the lean environment, marketing is a key source of information for the manufacturing process. Understanding market demand is fundamental in responding properly because the most efficiently designed and built product is just waste if the consumer is unwilling to buy it. Therefore, reliable customer feedback is essential for keeping a product line focused on models and features that will sell.
Marketing Communications
Agility - the speed at which a company responds to demand - is an element that must be considered alongside the cost-cutting principles of lean thinking. Marketing communications, in the form of advertising, require a high level of agility in responding to both market demand and opportunity. For example, the lean business examines the cost and scope of quality print advertising as well as its impact on the company brand. The lean marketing department also measures unused materials and incorporates that information into future print runs to avoid wastage.
Marketing Activity
Marketing doesn't operate on the same cycles as manufacturing, so the fundamentals of lean can be difficult to apply. However, lean principles are much more than the fundamentals and some of the refined concepts are appropriate and innovative when applied to marketing. For example, many sales departments benefit from abandoning a shotgun approach to sales calls - in other words, calling everyone they can think of. Defining how calls occur and then measuring how representatives perform in response to these definitions is integral to lean thinking.
Continuous Improvement
Manufacturing looks to inventory as the first step in the supply chain, when in fact there is no need for inventory without sales orders. Any disconnect between supply and demand reduces a company's agility, which means a major focus of lean marketing is continually improving the connection between sales orders and production. This might include incorporating sales orders into the manufacturing resource planning system, for example, so production has notice of demand early in the manufacturing cycle.
Tags:
Marketing, Marketing Strategies
Product Value
The first principle of lean, at its base level, is to build only what is needed. In the lean environment, marketing is a key source of information for the manufacturing process. Understanding market demand is fundamental in responding properly because the most efficiently designed and built product is just waste if the consumer is unwilling to buy it. Therefore, reliable customer feedback is essential for keeping a product line focused on models and features that will sell.
Marketing Communications
Agility - the speed at which a company responds to demand - is an element that must be considered alongside the cost-cutting principles of lean thinking. Marketing communications, in the form of advertising, require a high level of agility in responding to both market demand and opportunity. For example, the lean business examines the cost and scope of quality print advertising as well as its impact on the company brand. The lean marketing department also measures unused materials and incorporates that information into future print runs to avoid wastage.
Marketing Activity
Marketing doesn't operate on the same cycles as manufacturing, so the fundamentals of lean can be difficult to apply. However, lean principles are much more than the fundamentals and some of the refined concepts are appropriate and innovative when applied to marketing. For example, many sales departments benefit from abandoning a shotgun approach to sales calls - in other words, calling everyone they can think of. Defining how calls occur and then measuring how representatives perform in response to these definitions is integral to lean thinking.
Continuous Improvement
Manufacturing looks to inventory as the first step in the supply chain, when in fact there is no need for inventory without sales orders. Any disconnect between supply and demand reduces a company's agility, which means a major focus of lean marketing is continually improving the connection between sales orders and production. This might include incorporating sales orders into the manufacturing resource planning system, for example, so production has notice of demand early in the manufacturing cycle.
