Lean Marketing House » TOC

The best Marketing in the world has failed, NOW WHAT!

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:41:00 +0000

What happens when you have the best marketing system in the world, the best marketing plan,the best advertising, the best referrals, the best public relations and you still lack sales! Find out why you may not need any of these things and how changing one simple thing could bring you a flood of new customers.

Value Stream Mapping

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!

Lean your Marketing through Segmentation

Technorati : Lean, Marketing Hourglass, TOC, Theory of Constraints, Value Stream Mapping

Theory of Constraints and Lean Six Sigma co-exist

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:47:00 +0000

Bob Sproull was my guest on the Business901 podcast. Bob is an experienced manufacturing executive with a distinguished track record of achieving improvement goals in Manufacturing, MRO, Quality, Product Development, and Engineering. His experience base ranges from low-volume custom products (truck bodies) to process industries (tires) to service industries (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul). He is a nationally known speaker and author on problem-solving and statistical techniques, as well as his latest book on implementing an integrated Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints.

Our discussion centered around The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints show you how to draw the best from Lean and Six Sigma by employing principles drawn from the Theory of Constraints. This approach will ensure that your effort is focused in the right place, at the right time, using the right tools, and the right amount of resources. This multi-pronged approach addresses cost accounting, variation, waste, and performance measurements. But most importantly, it focuses your organization on the right areas to optimize.

I enjoyed many of his thoughts, especially on Value Stream Mapping and his description of focusing on the matter at hand, the constraint.

Theory of Constraints + Lean + Six Sigma = Ultimate Improvement Cycle

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:22:00 +0000

I was getting to write a blog and was visiting several books I had just completed for some background information. I was distracted and saw that I had a couple of LinkedIn invitations and decided to review them instead. One of the invitations was from Bob Sproull. I stopped a second and looked over at the 2 books on the library table. Yep, I was correct Bob Sproull, author of The Ultimate Improvement Cycle was not only on my library table, but in me inbox as well. Being a marketing guy, I wondered, was this an up-sell! Has the world just gotten this small that as virtual strangers, there can be a connection of interest?

I found Bob’s book looking for the latest material on how the Theory of Constraints was developing. I am sure Bob found me because of my recent blogs on the subject. The likely hood of this development and this connection is highly unlikely, may be as recently as 12 months ago.

What caught my interest in Bob’s book The Ultimate Improvement Cycle is that recently there has been an added push from TOC disciples to bring TOC on an equal playing field as Lean and Six Sigma. I find it interesting because bottlenecks and constraints are an integral part of Lean and Six Sigma training but TOC has never seemed to be on an equal platform.

I had Mark Woeppel of Pinnacle Strategies recently, and he has a whitepaper on this subject. It is available for download on his site. He calls the process TLS, Theory of constraints- Lean-Six Sigma. You can listen to Mark on the Business901 podcast discuss some of the background on his paper. Bob’s book is the first book I have read that specifically addresses the same subject. They take different approaches with similar outcomes. I enjoyed the material in both and encourage you to read them.

The Ultimate Improvement Cycle or UIC makes the contention that without all 3 processes, you will significantly reduce your desired outcomes. Most specifically he addresses the need to work on one constraint at a time and using Lean or Six Sigma to correct the constraint. In theory, I have to agree with him that the constraint must be addresses and am a devout believer of that. He is absolutely right because the weakness of TOC may be in the development of the tools to use to do it. Bob also gives a short primer on each disciple. If you are not knowledgeable in one of the three areas or all of them, I believe it would not be a wasted book. It is not a lean or a six sigma book. It heavily leans, sorry for the pun, towards TOC.

The book is well written, giving you tools, charts and formulas to improve your business without breaking up the flow of the written material. I believe that it will take me several months to fully digest the book. Not that I have to re-read it, but using and putting into practice some of the examples that I will incorporate in my philosophy going forward. I will cite these examples in my blog in the upcoming weeks.

Technorati : Lean, Six-Sigma, TLS, TOC, Theory-of-Constraints, UIC, Ultimate-Improvement-Cycle

Lean your Marketing thru Segmentation

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:15:00 +0000

How do you look at your marketing? Do you know where your leads come from? How are you processing leads to make them successful? In my recent blogs about marketing and the Theory of Constraints, I discussed the connections between each step of the marketing hourglass. Many organizations do not look at their sales and marketing process in a linear fashion, let alone segmenting it. When organizations first map out the process, they look at connections where people come from being all over the map such as the diagram to the right. They look at a simple chain as an oversimplification of reality. Not everybody goes through each step of the cycle. Some will skip from step one to step three. Someone may enter the cycle in step three. These interconnections are not trivial, it is what makes your process work and it also may be stopping it from working.

So what is the purpose? The purpose of creating the marketing hourglass is very simple: Which is harder to manage the above diagram or this diagram?

Your flow system, The Marketing Hourglass, structure will allow an organization to operate at maximum efficiency. The secret in creating such a linear flow is segmentation. Without it, you will continue to operate in less than an optimum manner. You will never be able to find your constraint, because it will be moving around, practically every single opportunity.

Different opportunities, normal variation and changing workforce make it just about impossible to balance everything. There is a weakest link; there is one element in your system more limiting than another. Why is it so important to find that? Without working on your greatest constraint much of your work will be wasted and non-productive. Take a look at the diagram above and see how proper segmentation may alter your perception of the marketing hourglass. As you can see, not all steps may be needed for each and every channel. An excellent example is someone that has been referred to you. With the proper referral program in place, you will know exactly what step in the process that person should enter.

Keep segmenting your list, till you gain a linear flow. Yes, there may be a few exceptions. However, I think it might be interesting to scrutinize those exceptions. Are these exceptions really your target market or ideal client? I think you might find out that they are something less than ideal clients. Whatever you do, don’t ignore the exceptions; they may prove valuable insights to your marketing process. That thought may lead to another discussion.

Using the Theory of Constraints in Marketing

The Marketing Hourglass

Using your Marketing HourGlass to determine your Constraint

Identifying your Marketing Constraint

Exploiting and Subordinating your Marketing Constraint

Elavating and Repairing Marketing Constraints

Technorati : Duct Tape Marketing, Goal, Marketing HourGlass, Sales-Channels, TOC, Theory of Constraints

Elevating and Repairing Marketing Constraints

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:35:00 +0000

A continuation of my blog posts of Using the Theory of Constraints with your Marketing HourGlass. We are concentrating optimizing the Throughput of the Marketing Hourglass utilizing the Five Steps of Continuous Improvement: Steps 4 and 5.

Step 4. Elevate the system’s constraint.

You may have found significant improvement in the preceding steps and another constraint may have actually developed at this time. This is the step that we have to add capacity to the constraint. It may be additional events, sales people or increased advertising.

Reviewing the Marketing Hourglass you may have found significant shortcomings in one of the phases. You may have never instituted a formal referral program, for example. You may not have a presence in Social Media.

Jumping into this step early in the process is very common. The newest and/or the latest technology may seem an easy fix. Looking to vendors for your fix is an easy alternative, but you may not find the core problems associated with the constraint if you did. There is a reason this is the fourth step, and you should make every effort to improve the constraint through the fist three steps before adding equipment, software, increased advertising, etc.

This may also be the area that “Tribal Knowledge” may limit your thinking. We defend what we have always done. Look at new and different ways to accomplish the constraint.

Step 5. If a constraint is broken, go back to Step 1. However, don’t allow inertia to become a constraint.

You will always have a constraint. A fundamental concept of continuous improvement. As you correct one another will develop. As in Lean this is a fundamental concept of TOC.

Mot organizations have an unlimited number of things to improve. However, most of the time only a relative few will make a significant difference in your company’s bottom line. If you are going to improve something , IMPROVE IT.

Why waste everyone’s time? Changing the process without the data is cause for failure. You have heard it time and time again, JUST DO IT! We have been trained that way, action is accomplishment. However, the wrong action may accomplish little or drive you deeper into a hole. Without the data from the previous steps, you will not be able to make as effective and dramatic improvements that you desire. Seek 200% process improvements and cost reductions of half!

One of the sayings I have read about in TOC time and time again. Don’t leave inertia become the constraint. Change should help your performance, not hinder it.

Using the Theory of Constraints in Marketing

The Marketing Hourglass

Using your Marketing HourGlass to determine your Constraint

Identifying your Marketing Constraint

Exploiting and Subordinating your Marketing Constraint

Technorati : Duct-Tape-Marketing, Lean, Marketing, TOC, Theory-of-Constraints

Exploiting and Subordinating your Marketing Constraint

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:37:00 +0000

Step 2. Exploit the system’s constraint

This simply means; Getting the most out of the weakest link or phase. This is a great time to use the Lean tool of Kaizen. Getting rid of all waste associated with the systems constraint is the first step I would take. One of the things that TOC and Lean both encourage is to observe the process with people very familiar with it. They may tell you that this always happens or maybe an obvious statements such as we don’t have enough people. Looking at the waste you will readily identify some crucial changes.

Put a cost to the constraint. If this is your weakest link, improvement in this area will maximize the entire process. Understanding the cost of the constraint is imperative in moving forward. Once you have a cost assigned to the constraint, you start looking at improvement slightly differently. Observe how things move through a constraint. Hiring that one extra person, holding additional events, dedicating a phone line or a live operator could make significant differences. Using an tip from Rapid Product Development, you may want to parallel this process. This allows simultaneous actions versus many of the different types of time constraints detailed in or list of definitions.

Step 3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision.

Increase output through the constraint(phase) increase output for the entire system. I sometime use the analogy when a salesman senses an order. He puts everything else on hold and dedicates all his resources to getting that order. It is also very similar to the Lean method of Kanban. Kanban is a method of only releasing parts as needed through the process. A card must be given to the preceding event before that phase can start.

Interesting thought may be as you manage marketing campaigns or events that you only release calls, direct mail based on responses from your prospects. A proactive drip management program may solicit certain key actions before additional material is released automatically.

In manufacturing, I have seen a quality station placed in front of the constraint before allowing parts to move through the process. In marketing, you may add a qualifying step so the constraint or process only receives a more qualified prospect.

The next post will be steps 3 and 4.