(Nick Rich and Denis McCarthy, Extract from Lean TPM, A Blueprint for change. Butterworth Heinemann)

The modern competitive world calls for the management of key customer processes. These processes include:
- basic activities that are combined to just simply meet the demands of the market and can be thought of as 'conditions for trade';
- key processes that 'delight' customers and are 'market beating'.

For most operations this includes at least the management of quality and delivery processes and the mastery of these key processes cannot be given to an individual with the firm whatever the title of the manager. As such the quality assurance manager cannot, by himself or herself, guarantee the quality of the factory. Instead the manager is dependent upon the actions and decisions of the employees engaged in purchasing, operations, maintenance and also logistics to name but a few. The same is true of the delivery process and also that of cost management and cost reduction. No single manager has the ability to truly influence the production system. However, as a group of key stakeholders, who each shares a part of the value creating stages from door-to-door, it is possible by concerted effort to make substantial and radical improvements. Interestingly enough, from a management perspective, the modern competitive environment calls for the mastery of the door-to-door processes of quality, delivery and cost management. These are what the customer values and these processes differentiate those organisations from whom the customer will but and those that will not receive an order or custom. So 'world class' performance and highly effective manufacturing businesses recognise this 'lateral' nature of customer wants even though the business is not structured in that manner the business is managed as a system and through high levels of cross functional management. Such an approach also demands that each manager must learn about the business and the needs of other managers in the campaign to raise customer service.

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