Louis Columbus
Cincom Systems
Walking through the doors of the Siemens Energy and Automation Plant in Norwood, Ohio you immediately get a sense of the legacy this manufacturing plant has and the intense, even obsessive focus on customers driving it into the future. This plant has been in continuous operation for over 100 years at this location and is the leading producer of electric motors in North America. There are plaques just outside the front door older than anyone reading this, and inside there is this obsessive focus on excelling at each engine manufacturing task to delight customers.
What amazed me about my visits there was how obsessed the culture of this manufacturing plant is with their customers. In literally every conversation, from manufacturing supervisors to product specialists and production engineering, everyone sees their jobs from how it contributes to meeting customers’ expectations. This plant reverberates with a customer-centric focus.
Defining Their Own Destiny with a Passion for Customer-Driven Manufacturing
My second visit was during a low point of the recession. You’d expect morale to be low and a pessimistic mindset to pervade the plant. But I didn’t find that at all; what I did find were manufacturing teams that had an incredible intensity about quality. They were obsessed about quality and customer satisfaction. This plant continually strives to improve its quoting, product configuration, pricing and production processes, they never stop. You literally cannot have a conversation in this plant with anyone where the word customer does not come up within five minutes. It’s no wonder they won 2009 Plant of the Year from Plant Engineering Magazine. Be sure to watch this video and meet the folks who saved a plant by being obsessed with quality and customer-driven manufacturing.
Bottom line: Customer-centric manufacturing is more than a manta; it’s a process-driven strategy that is transformational and can keep manufacturing plants over 100 years old still fighting and winning customer deals daily.
Disclosure: Siemens Energy and Automation Plant is a Cincom customer and we congratulate them on winning 2009 Plant of the Year.
Flickr attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44431572@N00/4042504006/sizes/l/
Louis Columbus has over 20 years in the IT industry, specializing in product management, sales and marketing. Immediately before joining Cincom, Mr. Columbus was a Senior Analyst at AMR Research. He earned his MBA from Pepperdine University and completed the Strategic Marketing Management Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He has published 16 books on operating systems, peripherals and integration technologies.
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