ABSTRACT
Overview If there were one major concept above all others that could help organizations compete effectively in today’s world, it would be to understand and create systems that consistently meet customer needs and value expectations. Understanding the voice of the customer (VOC) is critical in today’s world. As an example, competition in many industries in today’s world occurs within increasingly narrowly defined market segments where organizational size becomes irrelevant. In these situations, narrowly focused market segments enable smaller organizations to successfully compete against larger ones if they arrive to market earlier and with products or services that match or exceed customer expectations. Understanding and translating the VOC also allows organizations to develop exciting new solutions to old problems, or to completely redefine older problems in terms of new paradigms and solutions. As an example, understanding key customer value elements such as time, price, utility, and function often allows immediate and substantial improvements to process workflows because nonessential operations or process waste can be easily identified and eliminated using value stream mapping (VSM) and similar Lean methods to map customer value through a process workflow. Subsequent improvement activities reduce cycle time and cost and improve quality. Understanding
customer needs and value perceptions also drives organizations to identify and align their resources behind core competencies. Alignment also acts as an impetus to outsourcing, insourcing, developing new supply-chain designs, and focusing attention on necessary improvements and modifications to process workflow design.
