Voice of Customer

Over lunch Eva and I sat down and caught up on how life was going. We swapped stories about kids, husbands, minor league hockey and vacation plans for the March Break.


During dessert Eva mentioned how nervous she was about the new aseptic line. Probing a bit, it turned out that she, as plant manager, was worried she was putting in a line that would ultimately fail in the marketplace, either because of cost or design.


"Well, what did you guys do to determine the VOC?" "The what???" "Ah!"


As we finished our cheesecake and settled down with our green teas, I proceeded to outline the idea of the Voice of Customer - or VOC.


The trickiest part is determining who is hte customer. Then, it is determining the need or want when the customers themselves doesn't know what it is.


Ultimately the customer is the person who uses the final product. But between you and that customer are many other customers; downstream equipment, the bank, company stakeholders, the distribution chain, the vendor and the government to name a few. Each one of them has their own needs and expectations. You need to prioritize them and find out which ones you need to respond to.


As far as knowing their needs and wants? You could look to your complaints file and find answers there, or you could conduct surveys, hold focus groups or do interviews. Or you can research on emerging trends to anticipate a change or look to upcoming regulations and laws which will change the operating landscape.


True, if you have managed to meet virtually all of the customers' needs (price, quality, functionality, aesthetics, ease of use....) and don't have a good sales and marketing program, you may not get far. Even with the best marketing plan but an unfulfilling product, you may get the initial buy, but not the repeat.

SIPOC and Training

Word came back from Curds and Whey head office of the approval of the aseptic project. The plant's favourite engineer had been assigned as the project manager and a new graduate was going to be supporting him to gain experience and knowledge.


As Eva wanted the engineers as focused as much as possible on the project, she asked us at Edge for guidance on how to get the engineer up to speed as fast as possible on plant operations. We discussed how a large element of training is purely hands-on application of the book knowledge and direct involvement in the process. Since anything in school will be more of a general nature and each operation has its slight differences be it age, or youth, of the equipment itself, the best start is to do a process map of the operation.



There are different types of process maps but in this case, the first on to do is the most basic, called a SIPOC (Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer).



Start with the middle, "Process" and describe it in 5-9 steps. More than 9 steps and it is too detailed for this stage and less than 5 and it is not detailed enough. Once the high level map is done, then look to the inputs to the process and the outputs. Some external inputs occur in the first step (ie raw milk, trained employees, water) and some occur at later steps (H2O2). Identifying when a new energy source, ingredient or packaging is added is key to greater understanding of the whole. When doing the outputs, using the same idea, it is always important to remember the waste streams as well as intermediate and final products.



Now you have an idea of what is going in, what is coming out and what happens inbetween. Next on the list is S and C ->Suppliers and Customers.



Look at individual inputs and determine who the key supplier is and in some cases, the secondary suppliers. Do the same with the outputs and customers. Don't forget that for both the supplier and customer, it may actually be another area of the plant. Also you may want to capture the data trail associated with the process.



Eva chose what was probably the best way to introduce the process to the trainee engineer -> Eva made the engineer create the SIPOC diagram herself, getting her to go to people and ask questions, thus building relationships as well as knowledge and experience of the process.

Scope Creep

As it happened, as soon as they left the 2nd meeting about the aseptic project charter, Eva received several e-mails from Sales and Marketing and from Corporate engineering.



After reading them, she called Edge of Control in to discuss how to manage the new demands and expectations from key stakeholders.



First we explained that this is called scope creep! As a project moves along, more information is uncovered, new external events occur and suddenly the project is having to solve climate change as well as world hunger.



Sounds easy but the first step is holding firm to initial commitments. The charter was built for this exact eventuality. Several questions need to be asked:


1. How does this new item relate to the original issue and objective of the project?

2. What risk to project success and the issue does it bring with it? And what is the risk to the project if it is NOT dealt with?

3. Will it impact the three cornerstones of a project – time, quality and cost? And by how much?

4. Can it be resolved with a stand alone project that is run concurrently? Do you have the resources to do it this way?



The folks at Curds and Whey went over this list as well as determining what stage of the process it would impact (they used a process map to help with this) and with some debate by different parties, the scope of the project was increased to include two of the points, two were set up as independent but concurrent projects and the last two were rejected.



There was no doubt that this would not be the last time they would have to face the issue of scope creep, but now a system was in place to consider the impact of the creep and determine if they should go down any other future paths.

Chartering a Project

While waiting to hear back about the budget, the Munleytown team decided to go ahead and launch the aseptic packaging line project. According to the messages sent from head office, especially marketing, this new line was in direct alignment with the corporate strategy for 2010 and the next 5 years. So, the risk of the project being cancelled seemed low.

To make sure the team was headed in the right direction and all together, Eva had the team work on developing a Project Charter.

A project charter basically consists of the title, a description of the issue or situation, the impact it has on the business and what the key objectives are. It outlines the scope of the problem, overall timing, key metrics and milestones and the who the key stakeholders are.

While a charter should be an evergreen document, Eva knew it was essentially a contract between her, the team members and the key stakeholders. If something changed, whether it be scope, timing, personnel or even the objectives, the charter would need to be updated, reviewed and signed off again.

The first go-round for the team produced a charter with a lot of holes. They just didn't have enough information. Who should be involved? What was the impact of the issue? When did it need to be done by? What is the right amount of stretch in setting the goals? What are potential risks to the project itself? But now the team was in agreement about what questions needed to be asked and was able to fill in the blanks during the 2nd chartering meeting.

Leaving the 2nd meeting, Eva felt good about her team and a lot more confident that they were all heading in the same direction to solve the problem.