Intelligent Manufacturing € September € 1995 € Vol. 1 € No. 9

How to Gain a Manufacturing Edge

By David Greenfield
Managing Editor

Advice comes to the manufacturing executive in a number of ways: colleagues, industry publications, and employees, to name just a few. However, in today's manufacturing arena, fraught with pressures from globalization, competition for customer loyalty, time to market and the battle for market share, executives need the kind of information that not only pinpoints their problems, but can show them the corrective steps that need to be taken.

Delivering the type of advice manufacturing executives need is the idea behind Enterprise 2020 - a research and development center focusing on the automotive, electronics, high-tech and other manufacturing industries. The center, operated by Andersen Consulting (Chicago, Ill.), opened on June 12 of this year. At Enterprise 2020, manufacturing executives explore, via a series of exhibits, multimedia presentations, guest speakers, case histories, best industry practices and hands-on workshops, how to implement new ideas and visualize organizational and technological change throughout their companies.

More than sixteen workshops have been conducted since the center's opening, and the center is usually booked more than a month in advance. Michael Dodge, of Andersen Consulting, said the center prefers to have sessions booked at least six weeks in advance to allow time for all the necessary preplanning undertaken by Andersen in order for each session to be "really meaningful to our clients."

Enterprise 2020 is available to all manufacturing organizations, as its program is structured across the entire industrial products sector - automotive, electronics, aerospace and defense, industrial equipment, and consumer durables. "We can customize to any sector of the manufacturing arena," said Dodge.


Venues of Help
To get at the root of a client's problems, Enterprise 2020 focuses on the core business processes Andersen Consulting considers to be critical to a company's success: the customer, demand generation, product and process development, demand fulfillment and lifetime customer support. Each of these processes is divided into separate "venues," so that all facets of each process can be detailed and looked at from the client's point of view.

A visit to Enterprise 2020 begins with the Customer Venue, where clients learn new ways to create a customer-focused organization by applying emerging technologies and new strategies. "Who is your customer and what are your channels of communication? How are they getting back to you? These are the types of questions asked to get at the essence of a client's customer operations," Dodge explained.

After the Customer Venue, clients move on to the Generate Demand Venue. This venue focuses on new issues and technologies shaping sales and marketing organizations, from sales force automation to consultative selling. Dodge said, "We talk about how companies can not just focus on cost reduction to make better profits, but must also look at using increased revenues to generate more profit to the bottom line."

The product engineering focus of Enterprise 2020's program comprises the Develop Products/Process Venue. "Here we look at such questions as: Are the products being manufactured actually focused in the right area? If not, should the client look at developing a new product line? And how is the client bringing those products to market and what timing are they using? Timing is crucial, because in today's marketplace you almost have to move at laser speed to keep up with the market as technology rapidly advances," he noted.

Supply chain concerns are dealt with in the Fulfill Demand Venue, where the entire process, from second, third and first tier suppliers, to OEMs, through the logistics arena and on to the customer, is considered in depth. Partnerships, alliances and all the changes currently taking place in the manufacturing supplier network today are presented. The client's supply network is also examined.

"These issues are particularly evident right now in the automotive sector," said Dodge. "Here we're starting to see a whole new focus and a new set of responsibilities given to Tier I suppliers, as they are being expected to do a lot of the engineering and development in addition to assuming warranty costs. These new requirements now being forced on Tier I suppliers can be a real drain on their human resources, because if they don't have the design and engineering activity going on in-house, they will have to partnership with someone who can do it on a world class basis. And if a client doesn't have such capabilities in-house, and they can't operate globally through a partnership, they're probably not going to be positioned at the Tier I level for long. The Tier I level is getting much smaller, but it's being given a lot more responsibility."

Following the Fulfill Demand Venue, the next step in the Enterprise 2020 process is the Customer Support Venue, where the focus is on customer service and the importance of the lifetime customer to the manufacturer. "Some manufacturers tend to think that once they've made a product and it's sold, that's the end of their relationship with the customer. But it's not. If you really want to develop a lifetime relationship with a customer, a manufacturer's efforts in this area must begin before the product is sold, and support must continue throughout the product's lifetime with the customer," Dodge said.

Manufacturers that cannot provide such service quickly and efficiently will lose out in the next century, Dodge predicted. "The market is impatient. Some other manufacturer is always out there, just waiting for you to drop the ball so that he can come in and pick up the pieces and steal that lifetime customer from you."

The last venue is the Manage the Journey Venue. Here, after having gone through the other venues, a company's readiness to change is assessed. According to Dodge, "Clients know that change is inevitable and that they have to change to stay competitive, but change is one of the most painful things a company must go through. However, the most successful companies change before they have to. As a matter of fact, such companies are predictive about change, and they thrive on it. If you don't thrive on change, you probably won't be competitive in the 21st Century, because change is an important part of continuous improvement."

While all the venues that comprise Enterprise 2020 are open for use, not everyone goes through them all. "It depends on the customer," Dodge said. "Workshops can be scheduled from a half day to two or three days. It all depends on the level of help sought by the client. Typically, a client will come in and focus on the Fulfill Demand and Customer Support Venues, and spend one or two days doing it."


Change Applies to All
Much like the advice Enterprise 2020 provides companies to help them adapt to the competition of the 21st Century, the center itself is not stagnant. "I see Enterprise 2020 as a living environment," said Dodge. "If we took a snapshot of the center's practices today and then do it again six months from now, you would see that it is evolutionary. It's going to change as technology improves and as different customer focuses grab hold."