I fully agree that designing for simplicity is a competitive advantage. During the first half of my career, I worked as an engineer designing products for manufacturing, as well as designing the equipment to manufacture those products. I experienced first-hand what effect design decisions had on the manufacturability of those products.
Over the span of my career, I’ve seen competition increase and profit margins decrease. Whereas, in the early days there may have been plenty of profit margin to cover design or manufacturing complexity, these days customers are no longer inclined to pay as much as they used to. For, they are under the same constraints.
Several years ago, my current employer undertook the application of Lean Six Sigma. One of the earliest concepts centers around the definition of Waste. We learned that waste is defined as, “any step or action in a process that is not required to complete a process (called “Non Value-Adding”) successfully.” and that Customers are not willing to pay for Non-Value-Adding activities ("8 Wastes", n.d.).
I can share a personal example of this. About 30 years ago, the company that I worked for then purchased an automated saw that was used to trim PVC extrusions for assembly. The saw was designed to trim three similar profiles, which were designed with the same core dimensions.
The saw was designed to guide and to support the profiles in the same orientation they appeared on the profile drawing. However, because there was variation in the tolerances across profiles, the saw required adjustment every time we switched from one to another. This added labor costs into our (the Customer's) process. We (I) ultimately redesigned the saw to process the parts “upside-down”, which almost eliminated the need for adjustment. In this instance, our Supplier had “designed” in non-value adding activities into our process. We simplified the machine design and eliminated the labor for ourselves.
It is in our best interest to look at the whole Product Life Cycle, to look for opportunities to simplify and to reduce costs. Ball (2010) writes, “How much of the cost of a system is bound up in its complexity? Each part has to be designed, procured, tested, assembled tested, transported, stored, maintained and ultimately disposed of. There are dollar and time costs associated with each of these jobs and this is multiplied by the number and the complexity of the parts (p. 1).
We must be easy to do business with and we must ensure that we deliver the Customer’s order on time and complete. Otherwise, our Customers will look elsewhere. If we think about it, these have been what Customers have wanted all along. The only difference between today and the past is that today’s Customers are more empowered than ever before.
McQuivey (2013) says it this way. “Because what has changed is consumers’ ability to get what they want. This has led them to expect that their needs can and should be met—more often and more completely than ever before in human history.
So while people have not fundamentally changed, the way they act out their fundamental drives and urges has changed. This shift isn’t new. It has been taking place gradually over the past two hundred years, in the wake of the movement toward democracy and the Industrial Revolution, but the arrival of the digital era has sped up the change dramatically.” (p. 67)
In the first chapter of their book, Empowered, Bernoff & Schadler relate that individuals have more power over companies than ever before. (Bernoff & Schadler, 2010)
It is imperative that we do all that we can (profitably) to ensure that our Customers prefer us to our competition.
I am an avid reader, with somewhat eclectic tastes. More than 30 years ago, I would sometimes drive hours just to visit a used bookstore just to browse for good finds. Also, back then, bookstores might send out a monthly mailer with their inventory. Sometimes, I could get what I wanted, and sometimes it was gone before I realized that it was there. Finding what I wanted was often hit or miss.
Now, thanks to Amazon, AbeBooks, and Alibris, I can shop booksellers, worldwide, from the comfort of my recliner. I can almost always find a copy of what I am looking for. I can choose the condition and, often, the price range I want to pay. And, the best part is the book comes to me!
When I do find myself in a used bookstore, I cross-check prices with the websites, before purchasing anything, to ensure that I am getting the best price. The websites’ access to such a broad inventory has immeasurably enhanced my used book collecting ability. (Much to the chagrin of my wife.)
I wrote the first draft of this post on what is known as Black Friday here in the States. It is a traditional big shopping day that occurs on the day after our Thanksgiving holiday. My wife has always enjoyed going out with the crowds and I've enjoyed staying home. During the course of the day this year, my wife called me from one of the stores to ask whether I thought a particular item was being offered at a good price. I was already logged on to my PC and I quickly went to the store's website, found the item, and found an alternate in the same store, which was a better deal. At the same time, I compared the price with other businesses on the Internet and determined that she should purchase the alternate item. This only took a couple of minutes. Years ago, we may have spent half a day, driving from store to store comparison shopping, to find the best deal. Or, we have just purchased the first item that we saw. As a consumer, the Internet and businesses' use of it has given me tremendous added value.
References:
8 Wastes. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://goleansixsigma.com/8-wastes/
Ball, L. (2010). TRIZ Power Tools: Simplifying. Tempe, AZ: Third Millennium Publishing.
Bernoff, J., & Schadler, T. (2010). Empowered: Unleash your employees, energize your customers, transform your business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
McQuivey, J. (2013). Digital Disruption: Unleashing the next wave of innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts.: Forrester Research. Kindle Edition
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