Depending on your industry, marketing can be anywhere between 5 to 30% of your total expenses. In most operations that I am familiar with it runs in the neighborhood of 5 to 10%. It is not uncommon to find labor at a similar amount. Would you accept the same amount of variability in your workforce? If you have variability in your marketing, why not cut the budget? Increasing it only will increase the variability. On the other hand, if you have low capacity you have little variation. Is that the problem you want to have?

Variation in demand and in processing time will have a major impact on your total process lead time. If you are functioning close to your optimum level, customers in your value stream, and you get a sudden rush of opportunities, the opportunities will be severally minimized by just variation alone.

How do you minimize variation and get a handle on the process? It has to do with segmentation. If you have not segmented your list properly, you have tremendous variation and the numbers you are looking are skewed. You must segment until you can get a handle on variation. It does not mean you have to segment to, there is none. You have to segment until you can start to minimize the variation that is incurring. You must conquer complexity by narrowly defining your problem.

Related Posts:

Value Stream Mapping for Marketing

Lean your Marketing thru Segmentation

If you control it well, it flows well!

Following the Customer’s Need in your Value Stream Map

Technorati : Lean Variation Six Sigma, Marketing Systems, Value Stream

A value stream map will take into account not only the activity of the product, but the management and information systems that support the basic process. You will gain insight into the decision making flow in addition to the process flow. The basic idea is to first map your process, then above it map the information flow that enables the process to occur.

Why use Software for Value Stream Mapping? I think th euse of software that is written specifically for Value Stream Mapping is importnat. It forces you to make a decision to drill down into the subject as you are doing it versus later in the process. This particular tool is interesting because of the ability to Excel’s powerful scenarios to analyze multiple sets of numbers without needing to redraw an almost identical map over and over again. Take a look at some of the other features.

1. Visually see your entire process flow using the language of Lean to learn to see and eliminate wastes
2. Answer the question How can we make only what we need when we need it?
3. Form a blueprint for Lean implementation to rally your team to eliminate wastes
4. Instant o n-line training for Lean concepts and techniques
5. Easily customized written in Excel with all of its familiar formulas and charts
6. Professional deliverables easily stored, emailed, and shared
7. Drill down to swim lane flowcharts and other related documents
8. Import Old comparison data with the click of a button
9. Inexpensive to easily share & collaborate

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Simple, Easy to use Lean Six Sigma Software tools

Do you know much value you provide? If not, how can you be more effective?

5 Step Process to Lean Marketing

Technorati : 6 Sigma, Excel, Lean, Mapping, Six Sigma, Software, Value Stream

The Purpose of a Process Map:

1. Graphical representation of how the process is performed.
2. Identify process steps that are non value added.
3. Identify data collection points.
4. Created for each service. (Ex -Webinar)
5. Created for every project and continuously updated.
6. Provides a step by step guide for brainstorming and improvement.

A Basic Process map should include:

1. Value added and non-value steps.
2. Process owners of each step
3. Time for each step.
4. Defect rate for each step.

A Real Process Map should include:

1. All of the Basic Steps
2. Input and outputs of each process step (X’s and Y’s).
3. Current requirements of each X and Y.
4. Defect rate associated with each X and Y.

Creation of a Process Map

1. Assemble Team
2. Scope the project/process being mapped. Focus only on a particular service/product such as the example of a Webinar above.
3. Identify all steps to perform this process and note if this step is value added or non value added.
4. Identify the inputs (X’s) and outputs (Y’s) of each process step.
5. Capture current specifications, process owners and materials for each X and Y identified.
6. Identify and document all data collection points within the project scope.

I have included this process for a single step in the diagram below for a graphic understanding of the process. Don’t get hung up
on the X, Y, f or the equation. Just start looking at the basic process. I find out the people that want to go to the next step will
and the ones that don’t still receive value in this exercise. They will just rely on “Tribal Knowledge” versus data.

That’s it! But what about results and what we are going to do about all this. This is simple beyond the scope of this step. In the Six Sigma Process of DMAIC, we are only at the Measure stage. The next stage is Analyze. I wonder what we will do next.

Technorati : DMAIC, Value Stream, lean, marketing, measure, process map, six sigma