Six Sigma and Branding
Posted by: meikah | 26 May 2009 | 8:48 pm
Your brand differentiates you from others. It also because of your branding that customers seek you out amidst piles of other similar products. Brand strategy therefore is crucial to your business.
Thus, companies think of ways to develop a brand and sustain it. Perhaps, not many know that Six Sigma is also a versatile, effective framework for connecting executive goals (business strategy), marketing communication (brand promise) and management (operational activities).
An article on iSixSigma discusses how Design for Six Sigma’s DMADV for brand strategy.
| Table 1: Adapting Design for Six Sigma’s DMADV for Brand Strategy | |
|
Design for Six Sigma |
Brand Six Sigma |
| Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) deliverables. | Ensure that operational activity is delivering on the competitive advantage and customer expectations created by the brand promise. |
| Measure and determine customer needs and specifications. | Determine the measurable extent and scope of competitive advantage and customer expectations created by the brand promise. |
| Analyze the process options to meet the customer needs. | Work back from the brand promise through brand associations and tangible brand attributes/CTQs to ensure that operational building blocks – business goals, organization, processes, administration and metrics – are producing the competitive advantage and delivering on customer expectations generated by the brand promise. |
| Design detailed processes to meet customer needs. | Design and implement the operational building blocks. |
| Verify the design performance and ability to meet customer needs. | Use measurement to verify that the operational building blocks are producing the tangible brand attributes/CTQs contributing to the brand associations and brand promise. |
Filed under: Brand Strategy, DFSS, DMADV, Six Sigma
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Can’t Six Sigma Save GM?
Posted by: meikah | 17 July 2008 | 2:27 am
General Motors (GM) was the company to beat: innovative, efficient, successful! Its growth and success was perhaps unprecedented.
About five years ago, an article on BNET shares how Six Sigma is driving quality at GM, and is enjoying great benefits and savings. Because of DFSS and Six Sigma, GM had increased vehicle quality while lowering costs and improving its products’ reliability and durability.
Fast forward to 2008, GM is set to sell assets, borrow money, and cut jobs to raise up to $15 billion. The company has been having huge problems for years now, and a silver lining is not in the offing.
It’s sad to hear successful companies going downhill. My question now is can’t Six Sigma save GM? Can’t they do a DMAIC?
Update:
GM Cuts: Time to Panic? Depends Who You Ask
Filed under: Brand Strategy, GM, Manufacturing, Six Sigma
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DFSS and Brand Strategy
Posted by: meikah | 13 November 2007 | 3:33 am
Over at CustServ, I wrote about striking a balance between brand experience and customer experience. Today, I found another interesting article on iSixSigma. It talks about incorporating Design for Six Sigma to building brand strategy.
The premise is that while companies work hard to make brand strategies more than just empty promises, they often find themselves stuck in the execution phase.
This is where Six Sigma comes in. The methodology is often viewed, and rightly so, as a versatile, effective framework for connecting executive goals (business strategy), marketing communication (brand promise) and management (operational activities). Here’s an example of a bank working on its brand using Six Sigma.
Consider the case of the business bank that wanted to increase its share in a regional market. The bank used the DMADV roadmap of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and adapted it for brand strategy (Table 1). By applying DMADV, the organization realized that to advance from the business strategy to marketplace results, it was necessary to first understand the brand, define the brand promise and identify specific actions required to deliver on it (Define, Measure, Analyze). Finally, the organization needed to make sure that the defined brand promise actually was fulfilled (Design, Verify).
Source:
iSixSigma, Promises of Brand Strategy and Design for Six Sigma
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
