Building a Chain of Customers: Linking Business Functions to Create the World Class Company - Hardcover

Schonberger, Richard J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091745993 ISBN 13: 9780091745998

Publisher: Random House Business Books, 1990

Synopsis

The author in this text, introduces a new concept - that each of the main business functions such as design, operations, accounting and marketing is a "customer" for the others, and that the links between and within departments form a continuous "chain of customers" extending to those buying the product or service. Everyone has a customer. Performance is no longer measured internally, but instead is judged by what is good for the next customer.

About this title

Review

Charles Bingham

Executive Vice President, Weyerhaeuser Company

Tom Peters

Author of "Thriving on Chaos"

Organizations must be radically reconfigured. Richard Schonberger provides a bold -- and meticulously detailed -- blueprint for redesigning corporations to destroy functional myopia, to live as a whole to serve the customer.

Herbert B. Morote, Ph.D.

Sector President-Medical Becton Dickinson and Company

This book needs to be read and thoroughly understood by America's top management. It not only gives the answers to the Why's but gives precise direction to the How's. I totally agree that high quality, lower cost, quicker response and greater flexibility are not in conflict but mutually supportive.

Raymond G. Adams

Director, Manufacturing Operations Engine Division Caterpillar, Inc.

Richard Schonberger has provided a great deal of substance for a concept that we fully endorse. Executing the concept that every employee, regardless of his/her physical location and position in the business, has a customer that must be satisfied with quality and timely service or product is easy to articulate but challenging to implement thoroughly in a large organization.

H. Thomas Johnson

Retzlaff Professor of Cost Management Portland State University Co-author of "Relevance Lost"

Schonberger presents a powerful synthesis of leading-edge thinking that is bound to shape management practice well into the next century. This is the one book all managers, regardless of background or experience, "must" read in 1990. Schonberger uses scores of examples to show how the concept of "building a chain of customers" unifies all functions in the world-class enterprise.

Tom Peters Author of "Thriving on Chaos" Organizations must be radically reconfigured. Richard Schonberger provides a bold -- and meticulously detailed -- blueprint for redesigning corporations to destroy functional myopia, to live as a whole to serve the customer.

H. Thomas Johnson Retzlaff Professor of Cost Management Portland State University Co-author of "Relevance Lost" Schonberger presents a powerful synthesis of leading-edge thinking that is bound to shape management practice well into the next century. This is the one book all managers, regardless of background or experience, "must" read in 1990. Schonberger uses scores of examples to show how the concept of "building a chain of customers" unifies all functions in the world-class enterprise.

Herbert B. Morote, Ph.D. Sector President-Medical Becton Dickinson and Company This book needs to be read and thoroughly understood by America's top management. It not only gives the answers to the Why's but gives precise direction to the How's. I totally agree that high quality, lower cost, quicker response and greater flexibility are not in conflict but mutually supportive.

Charles Bingham Executive Vice President, Weyerhaeuser Company I highly recommend "Building a Chain of Customers" as required reading for every CEO who is truly committed to leading his or her organization to world-class manufacturing excellence.

Raymond G. Adams Director, Manufacturing Operations Engine Division Caterpillar, Inc. Richard Schonberger has provided a great deal of substance for a concept that we fully endorse. Executing the concept that every employee, regardless of his/her physical location and position in the business, has a customer that must be satisfied with quality and timely service or product is easy to articulate but challenging to implement thoroughly in a large organization.

About the Author

Richard J. Schonberger, author of the bestselling Japanese Manufacturing Techniques, World Class Manufacturing, and World Class Manufacturing Casebook (also from The Free Press), is a world-renowned authority on production and manufacturing. President of the consulting firm Schonberger & Associates, Inc., in Seattle, Washington, he was formerly George Cook Professor of Management at the University of Nebraska.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Business Books
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0091745993
• ISBN 13: 9780091745998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 349