Customer‐driven manufacturing

The basic tasks of a business are straight‐forward – getting and keeping customers and making profits, both set within the context of the short and long term. Explicit in these is not only a need for marketing and manufacturing to work well in themselves but to work well together. Companies, however, typically fail in this provision. To move to a more competitive response in today′s difficult markets requires more than co‐existence, it requires a shared partnership between the core parts of the firm. Shared understanding of marketing and manufacturing′s approach is the starting point. The other is building on a shared understanding of the market itself. In such a way, a move to being customer‐driven starts to take shape.