Organizational Principles In The Office

To begin QRM efforts in the office, it's critical to look at each segment of your business where there are opportunities for success via a quick response strategy.

Ask your marketing people: Is there a noticeable trend toward shorter lead times in any area of your market?

Ask your sales force: Which clients or business segments are complaining about long lead times, and are you losing sales because of this?

Ask the customer service people: Is there a market segment where your deliveries are late as a norm, and customers are losing patience and likely to jump ship?

Use all this information to narrow in on the most promising opportunity. By a promising opportunity, we mean one where a reduction in your lead times could make a splash - it could dramatically increase your market share, or open up a new market segment, or make your customers stand up and recognize your competitive performance.

By product we mean, not the physical item manufactured for a customer, but rather, the outcome of the office processing steps for this segment. In many cases when an order is received, traditional manufacturers will process the order by the following office departments: inside sales, order entry, design engineering, process planning, materials planning, scheduling and shop release.

After all of these steps, the order is finally handed over to a range of manufacturing departments within the company. The product of these office-processing steps is the "shop packet" - a folder containing blueprints, routings, processing instructions, etc.

In the customer's eyes, the process to gather all the information to obtain the approval of the order and deliver to the manufacturing floor took way too long, probably weeks rather than days. So you need to base the strategy for capturing this customer and possibly their market segment on quick response in order entry and fulfillment.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

Luke 2:8-14 KJV