Sodhi ManMohan S, Sodhi Navdeep S
City University's Cass Business School, London.
Harv Bus Rev. 2005 May;83(5):135-42, 154.
Many companies are now good at managing costs and wringing out manufacturing efficiencies. The TQM movement and the disciplines of Six Sigma have seen to that. But the discipline so often brought to the cost side of the business equation is found far less commonly on the revenue side. The authors describe how a global manufacturer of industrial equipment, which they call Acme Incorporated, recently applied Six Sigma to one major revenue related activity--the price-setting process. It seemed to Acme's executives that pricing closely resembled many manufacturing processes. So, with the help of a Six Sigma black belt from manufacturing, a manager from Acme's pricing division recruited a team to carry out the five Six Sigma steps: Define what constitutes a defect. At Acme, a defect was an item sold at an unauthorized price. Gather data and prepare it for analysis. That involved mapping out the existing pricing-agreement process. Analyze the data. The team identified the ways in which people failed to carry out or assert effective control at each stage. Recommend modifications to the existing process. The team sought to decrease the number of unapproved prices without creating an onerous approval apparatus. Create controls. This step enabled Acme to sustain and extend the improvements in its pricing procedures. As a result of the changes, Acme earned dollar 6 million in additional revenue on one product line alone in the six months following implementation--money that went straight to the bottom line. At the same time, the company removed much of the organizational friction that had long bedeviled its pricing process. Other companies can benefit from Acme's experience as they look for ways to exercise price control without alienating customers.
如今，许多公司都善于控制成本并提高生产效率。全面质量管理运动和六西格玛管理法已经确保了这一点。但是，在商业等式的成本方面经常采用的管理方法，在收入方面却很少见。作者描述了一家全球工业设备制造商（他们称之为Acme公司）最近如何将六西格玛应用于一项与收入相关的主要活动——定价流程。在Acme公司的高管看来，定价与许多制造流程非常相似。于是，在一位来自制造部门的六西格玛黑带的帮助下，Acme定价部门的一位经理招募了一个团队来执行六西格玛的五个步骤：定义什么构成缺陷。在Acme公司，缺陷是指以未经授权的价格出售的产品。收集数据并准备进行分析。这包括梳理现有的定价协议流程。分析数据。团队确定了在每个阶段人们未能实施或主张有效控制的方式。推荐对现有流程进行修改。团队试图减少未经批准的价格数量，同时又不建立繁琐的审批机制。建立控制措施。这一步骤使Acme公司能够维持并扩大其定价程序的改进。由于这些变革，仅在实施后的六个月内，Acme公司仅在一条产品线就额外获得了600万美元的收入——这些钱直接增加了利润。与此同时，公司消除了长期困扰其定价流程的许多组织摩擦。其他公司在寻找在不疏远客户的情况下实施价格控制的方法时，可以从Acme公司的经验中受益。
