Re: Defining Customers

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk@pop3.onet.co.uk>]

Carole L. Touchinski, Asked......

>Any suggestions on Deming literature discussing defining customers?
>Anyone have a Deming-based best practice application to this subject area?

Hi There all

I asked a little while back if the ideas of supplier and customer are 
really useful if we try to look at an organisation as a system.  A 
supplier cannot supply us unless we supply them with the information 
of what we want etc.  As a couple of people have noted the customer 
is the next person in the process, no matter their title etc.  I 
bring this up again as there seems to be a feeling in the big wide 
world that customer focus is everything and that they are the god and 
the supplier is the whipping boy etc.  This - to my mind - seperates 
the person from the system in the same way as blame does etc.  at 
seems to me to be a poor outcome and a bit of flawed thinking. 
Having said that, Page 60 Fig TNE (Chapter 3)  Production viewed as a 
system.  This is a nesting model, look to any depth of an 
organisation of any sort and this model fits.  The arrows follow the 
flow of production - and remember that we have to produce information 
and knowledge as well as things.  Deming uses the word "Consumer" as 
opposed to customer, and this asks a real different question and may 
be easier to answer (or more meaningful) in a non-profit organisation.

As Myron points out in schooling the product is the education of the 
student, not an educated student.  IN the first instance the student 
may be their own supplier but in the act of developing their 
education (over a life time) they are clearly the consumer.  They may 
then become a supplier of knowledge, knowhow and skills to other 
consumers etc.

Again in non-profit (and profit come to that) we may need to ask what 
is it the consumer wants and what is it the consumer needs?  I am 
thinking here that the consumer of the health care service is the 
patient.  They may want a nice well appointed suite with hot and cold 
running nurses etc.  What they need is to not get ill in the first 
place.

I have been 'thinking' with a UK organisation who treat children with 
some specific disabilities. One faction have taken the business view 
that they are there to trat the children and they have set 
performance targets based on the number of children seen.  Another 
faction have argued that the product is not the treatment of the 
children but the improvement of the quality of life for the family 
that the child is part of.  Thus they may have more impact on the 
quality of life of the child by spending time with the parents 
teaching them how to do some aspect of the treatment rather than 
doing the treatment itself.  This is seen as being poor by the first 
group because the second group are not seeing so many children and 
thus are not getting such good value for money from the staff.

(I have to admit I side with the second group..)

However the reason for this little fable is that it is not only 
important to identify who your consumers are, but what your 'product' 
is.  IN Myron's instance you do not get to the student being the 
consumer, until you have identified that the product is the education 
not the educated.
-- 

	Roger.

---------------------------------oooOOOooo--------------------------------------Roger 
C. Key				 mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk
Prescient - The Whole as One
(44) 01639 871062