The Six Sigma Way, How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies Are Honing Their Performance
An implementation blueprint for
Six Sigma.
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Six Sigma Way, How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies Are Honing Their Performance
Chapter 13: Defining Customer Requirements (Roadmap Step 2)
Introduction
This chapter is all about what may be the most important new core competency your organization will need to develop in the 21st century. Understanding what customers really want and how their needs, requirements, and attitudes change over time will require a combination of discipline, persistence, creativity, sensitivity, science, and, sometimes, luck.
Step 2 Overview
The final products of this Six Sigma activity include:
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A strategy and system for continually tracking and updating customer requirements, competitor activities, market changes, etc. aka, a Voice of the Customer (VOC) [1] system.
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A description of specific, measurable performance standards for each key Output, as defined by the Customer(s)
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Observable and (if possible) measurable service standards for key interfaces with Customers
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An analysis of performance and service standards based on their relative importance to customers and customer segments and their impact on business strategy.
The tasks you must undertake to develop these deliverables are shown in Figure 13.1. Achieving the first task, an ongoing customer feedback system, is really a long-term goal. In the initial stages of a Six Sigma effort you are likely to focus on high-priority input from customers rather than revamp your entire customer-monitoring effort. Because the ability to really listen to the customer is becoming so critical to business success, however, we ll begin with that major initiative.
Figure 13.1: Six Sigma Roadmap Step 2 and substeps
[1]We use the single term Voice of the Customer throughout the book, to signify both efforts to understand current and future needs of...
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