When determining requirements, we have two different important perspectives to understand. The first is the voice of the business. This can include the board of directors and executives, stockholders in the organization, employees, and suppliers. The voice of the business must also include government mandates, information technology, and human relations requirements. And we can’t forget the operations part of your organization and the groups like engineering and quality. They all contribute to the voice of the business. We also have the voice of the customer. Remember, the customer should drive us in the implementation of Lean Six Sigma. Many different tools exist for us to capture good information from customers. Including customer surveys, customer feedback mechanisms, and certainly, specifications that customers give us regarding their expectations for products and services. There are important processes for capturing business requirements, also known as the voice of the business. It typically begins with the overall mission, vision, and objectives of the organization. We might leverage tools like policy deployment or management by objective. We typically focus on things like internal efficiency and productivity. These are often associated with value stream management. And understanding the entire delivery of value across the end to end supply chain. This is influenced by a number of factors including the need to solve problems with the process. And we need to remember we are never done making improvements. It’s all about continuous improvement and that is a never ending journey. We do have constraints, including the constraint of the budget. We can’t necessarily throw money at everything.
We’re also constrained by compliance and regulation requirements. For example, the Federal Drug Administration or FDA has all kinds of requirements that need to be met if you produce foods or drugs. The voice of the customer, capturing their information, it’s all about gathering the requirements and precisely documenting them. Typically, we need to define requirements as quantifiable terms that relate to specific features. The voice of the customer includes important things, such as a complete set of customer’s needs expressed in their own words. Reflecting how they view, use, feel, and interact with the product or service. And we need to prioritize these needs based on their importance to the customer. Staying in tune with the voice of the customer helps the organization remain relevant at all times. In fact, Peter Drucker was credited with this statement. Only two things in business make money, marketing and sales, and everything else are the costs. Without a clear voice of customer input, how do we make sure that we’re developing and innovating the right product and services? Let’s put the voice of the business and the voice of the customer all together in a Venn diagram. Where on the left side, we have the important voice of the business inputs, like the need to be profitable, to manage our cost, and continually improve productivity to get good results. Then, on the voice of the customer side, we need to include the customer’s perspective on what adds value. The fair market price, their requirements for durability and product life cycle. And finally, what are the important features they care about the most? That all comes together in the middle of our diagram with our quality practices. How we design and deliver our customer support and how we execute on the end to end supply chain to deliver the products and services to the customer.