Streamlining Business Systems to Enhance Customer Experience

As Director of Operations for Okuma America Corporation, I’m involved in a wide variety of activities that customers almost never see. Production planning, procurement, contract administration, options installation, electrical/mechanical exchange, warehousing, shipping, receiving, logistics…we have quite an array of business systems under the umbrella of operations.

THE ART OF MAKING THINGS BETTER

The interesting part of all this is that we're constantly tweaking and fine-tuning our systems and looking for ways to enhance and do things better. It’s part of Okuma’s culture of monozukuri, “the art of making things better”. Each and every day, we look for ways we can advance CNC machining technology and make it better for our customers. We apply the same philosophy and focus to ensure that our customer experience is the best it can be.

Given the complexity of the business systems mentioned above, we need to consistently focus on streamlining operations, and currently we have several projects underway that are intended to do just that. Here are a few examples of how Okuma is continuously evolving our business systems to enhance customer experience.

STREAMLINING OUR RECEIVING PROCESS

When a customer needs a part, speed is crucial. So we asked ourselves, how can we receive material faster, so we can enter it into our ERP (enterprise resource planning) software and share that information with our distributors? We’ve been working on automating and streamlining our receiving process to take steps out of the process and make it faster.

In the past, warehouse employees would work on the computer at their desks and then go out and move material. Now they use handheld scanners so they can do both of these jobs at the same time. We’re also working with some of our larger vendors to establish a means of “mass receiving” or pre-receiving orders so that when they show up on our floor all we need to do is physically put them in stock. The goal here is to minimize the duration of time when materials are invisible to a customer, making everything available in the shortest amount of time possible. Days and even minutes count when you need a part for your machine tool.

ADDING BARCODES TO OUR SHIPPING PROCESS

We’re shaving minutes off the pick-and-ship process by adding barcodes throughout the process. There was a time when we printed out paper packing slips along the way, but today we use barcodes, where we layer on various pieces of information about the steps of the process as materials make their way out the door. This take steps and time out of the shipping process.

EFFICIENCIES WHEN ORDERING MACHINE OPTIONS

There are various scenarios related to adding machine options that we’re working to streamline. First, we’re investigating ways to get these options taken care of in-house on a larger scale, so we can maximize the number of complete machine shipments going out the door.

We’re also creating a dynamic sales ordering system that’s responsive to the realities of the customer experience when ordering a machine tool. Once we receive an order and accept it into our system, it’s entirely possible that the customer may reach out with additional modifications to that order. We understand this can happen, especially with orders containing many options. Currently we’re investing resources to increase our operational agility and make sure this process is hassle-free and easy as possible for our customers, distributors and Okuma members.

GROWING INTO THE FUTURE

Okuma invests in our business systems to ensure they’re robust enough to handle our needs today while allowing us to expand and grow into the future. Our commitment is to advance not only our machine tool technology itself, but also to enhance customer experience. By doing so we’re fulfilling our mission of “passionately pursuing a customer for life.”

About Mike Vassil
Mike Vassil is Director of Operations for Okuma America Corporation, a world-leading builder of CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machine tools, founded in 1898 in Nagoya, Japan. Okuma is the industry’s only single-source provider, with the CNC machine, drive, motors, encoders, and spindle all manufactured by Okuma. The company also designs its own CNC controls to integrate seamlessly with each machine tool’s functionality.

Company: Okuma America Corporation
Website: www.okuma.com
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