Lean Six Sigma and marketing: a missed opportunity

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the current use being made of the sustainability message within business improvement activity and project justification within individual businesses. Design/methodology/approach – This is a reflective paper that looks at an illustrative case study against the wider perspectives of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation, market orientation and business improvement initiatives in general. Findings – The piece discusses the gains derived from the LSS projects and identifies gaps in potential benefits in particular the paper questions how well any potential marketing messages were exploited by the organisation. The findings critically evaluates the impact that marketing function involvement could have in helping to promote the wider productivity message and its contribution to the wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy for the organisation. The document also suggests how the company could leverage internally focused projects to adopt a companywide marketing orientation and use such leverage to support future LSS project selection and justification. Research limitations/implications – The observations are limited to a single case study, although tempered by the authors’ wider experience. Further empirical research is required to validate the observations and conclusions. Practical implications – The proposed approach to future improvement initiatives can help to increase the wider productivity message and assist organisations to exploit their internal projects in external communications and wider CSR strategy. Originality/value – The paper proposes an approach that can be used to widen organisational involvement in improvement initiatives allowing future project justification to be less internally cost focused, more holistic with a focus on customer voice.

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“…23% of articles were from multi sectors where the data was collected from more than one industrial application/multiple case studies in a single article. However there were also other articles emerging from additional sectors including: construction (Banawi and Bilec, 2014;Marhani et al, 2012;Marhani et al, 2013;Ogunbiyi et al, 2014;Liang, 2011), metal (D'Errico et al, 2009), agri-food/food (Chaplin and Simon, 2014;Folinas et al, 2013) , rubber (Govindan et al, 2014) and logistics (Cosimato and Troisi, 2015). Fig.…”

Reducing Food Waste Through Lean and Sustainable Operations: A Case Study From the Poultry Industry

“…Using a case study, they mapped out the collaboration that exists between the lean concept and supply chain management in the food chain. Chaplin and O'Rourke (2014) proposed a business development program, which covers the Lean Six Sigma concept in food manufacturing in the UK. Their study focuses on determining the gaps and benefits of the Lean Six Sigma program for marketing activities.…”

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“…From a relationship marketing perspective, it is therefore crucial for the service organization to send a clear message to the marketplace that quality improvement efforts are made on an ongoing basis, in order to reassure consumers of its desire to meet or exceed their expectations. From this perspective, a better knowledge of the consumer"s perception of these efforts plays a pivotal role in quality improvement (Chaplin and O"Rourke 2014).…”