Six Sigma Marketing at Cummins
Posted by: meikah | 5 September 2006 | 11:36 pm
Very few companies are implementing a wholistic approach to Six Sigma, that is adopting the methodology to its entire operations. Among the few is Cummins, a leading power that design, manufacture, distribute and service engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions and electrical power generation systems. 
To deploy Six Sigma in its entire operations is no mean feat for Cummins. The company keep clients in more than 160 countries through its network of 550 company-owned and independent distributor facilities and more than 5,000 dealer locations.
Operating a huge business such as this, Cummins really needs a methodology that will allow them to monitor their activities, particularly their marketing tasks. This led Cummins to adopt a software package to manage its marketing campaigns, called Aprimo.
Manufacturing Business Technology describes:
The Enterprise Marketing Management suite from Aprimo is a set of Web-based, hosted applications that allow tracking the status of all material associated with a marketing campaign from beginning to end. It also provides important benchmarks for the marketing group’s Six Sigma initiative.
The results include a 61% reduction in production cycle time, a drop in revisions by 78%, and creative development costs cut by 23%. Now the group averages about two revisions per piece, which is below its 2.5-revisions benchmark. Keeping copies of graphics and other marketing assets offsite is no longer necessary, resulting in an annual 75% savings on management fees paid to outside vendors.
Knowing the bloody work of making marketing campaigns from conceptualization phase to the execution, I think Aprimo is another technology that really works well with Six Sigma.
