Health, Safety and Marmite

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I was struck this week by a couple of articles, both illustrating (to me anyway) the difficult balancing act of Consumer Products.

One was about how promotions can excite an almost physical response in people's brains. Apparently a free jar of Marmite is akin to being physically aroused.

I get that.

The interesting thing for a lot of my customers, is how that can be used to counteract a little-known aspect of promotions - the fact that almost all promotions are short lived. Let's call it the "Jenny Thompson" effect. Get the free jar of Marmite. Get excited. Get a jar of Bovril next time.

Apparently the researchers are going to figure out how to make promotional excitement last longer - I would call that the 64 billion dollar question. Or maybe the £1,200 money back question.

Then I read another article about the much more mundane - but infinitely more tragic - health and safety aspect of the companies that make our favourite products. Somebody, in a plant, somewhere, had an accident that gave them brain damage. Sorry, but there's no happy ending and no punchline.

Promotions, efficiencies, effectiveness and consumer engagement are all well and good - even better when people are kept fit and healthy.

2010 IfM Symposium

Looking forward to the 2010 Cambridge IfM symposium on International Manufacturing next week.

Whither paper?

I went to a very well organised event this week.

Traversing a very bleak part of London, we arrived at a particularly clean and well run manufacturing facility in the middle of what many attendees called a proxy northern European part of the country. It was slightly alien, and very efficient.

All the concepts were right - 8D, 6s, lean, all that. But I (as an SAP consultant) had a bit of a heart attack when I saw that their ERP system appeared to be a massive piece of brown paper!

Visually brilliant. When it worked. Not at all timely. Totally dependent on people's mood. Not at all visible to senior management. How this business turned over 4 times our revenue I don't know.

But. great machines. And able to export the vast - VAST. No VAAAASSST - majority of their output to other countries. A triumph of physics.

And I'm a physicist, so I approve!

Plain English Guide to key topics

I was alerted to this blog post on explaining key topics in Manufacturing in plain english http://bit.ly/bEHe1p. For those readers of this blog who might find this useful, I suggest taking a look - it's a short read, not too onerous, and could help if you find there's a lack of clarity in some areas.

Tomorrow's Manufacturer - Mobile Workforce

Just a teaser post, really! Mobile is interwoven with most of the other topics, and one of the key facts in any discussion around mobile is the sheer number of mobile devices - 4bn mobile devices in the world as opposed to PCs that just about get to a billion.

Instead of Microsoft and Intel being the ones to beat, the fight appears to be between newer players such as facebook, google and apple. (NB: was at an interesting dinner where Hermann Hauser spoke on how the value chain structure for mobile computing is fundamentally different from that underpinning the PC wave, which puts the preceding players at a distinct disadvantage)

So, against that backdrop, in my company's part of the world, 2 interesting pieces of news: SAP acquiring Sybase, and Bluefin being the first in the world to rollout Sybase-enabled SAP CRM. On the iPhone in my case, of course!

SAP acquiring Sybase: http://bit.ly/cNV9oq
Bluefin rollout Sybase SAP CRM: http://bit.ly/cjXzLh

Tomorrow's Manufacturer - Effective Co-Innovation

I have been discussing the Tomorrow's Manufacturer key themes with various people, and one conversation in particular stands out. I asked out of all 8 areas, which one did the person think was the most important. He thought for a while, and then said "Innovation. If we don't continually innovate, we will eventually die out".

This must be true for any manufacturer in higher-cost economies - particularly as companies in lower-cost economies are also starting to compete on innovation - companies like Huawei of China for example. Huawei would have been lucky to get into the top 100 list of suppliers to most major telecoms providers even as recently as 5 years ago. Now they are in the top 5 of many of them.

I also have an interest in Procurement, because of my background. One of the key themes in Procurement over the past 3 years has been Supplier Relationship Management. The idea that purchasing professionals should in some cases put away their price-bashing baseball bats when going to visit a supplier about a requirement, and start to look at them as a partner to develop a trusted relationship with. John Henke has done research to suggest that "Trust" in a supplier-customer relationship can result in revenue growth on the part of the customer, not just cost reduction. Why? Because if a supplier trusts you, they are more willing to invest in the relationship, more willing to take risks for you, and importantly, more willing to give you a greater share of their innovation.

With the fragmenting of supply chains, and increasing globalisation, co-innovation is becoming ever more important.

Of course, involving third parties in innovation would tend to increase lead times. So it will be interesting to see what good looks like, in terms of harnessing the discretionary effort of suppliers in the innovation process, and at the same time, accelerating the time to market.

Tomorrow's Manufacturer - Excellent Customer Service

I'm working on the first round table event which is going to deal with Excellent Customer Service. I've been fortunate enough to have been put in touch with Irene Ng (http://value-basedservicesystem.blogspot.com/), whose research lends a provocative perspective to this area. Having read some of Irene's work, and having seen a broad range of Manufacturer's offering different levels of Customer Service and Support, I'm beginning to view it like this:

1. Traditional Manufacturer. Offers “customer support” – i.e., if a product fails, they’ll come and reactively fix it
2. Progressive Manufacturer / Today’s Manufacturer. Offers “customer service” – i.e., is able to proactively offer services alongside the product, to help the customer get the best from the product
3. Tomorrow’s Manufacturer. Co-creates value with its customers within a value-based system. Barriers between product, service, supplier and customer are blurred and dynamic

I'm looking forward to what should hopefully be a lively debate in June!