Success Stories
Voice of the Customer (VOC) - Milbank Manufacturing

Kent Business Solutions recently led a
cross-functional team of employees at Milbank Manufacturing to develop a Voice of the Customer (VOC) process for NPD Product Development (NPD) and product improvement purposes. Milbank now have an comprehensive, but easy-to-use VOC
process that all customer-facing employees have ready access to at their fingertips.
Customer feedback is now being incorporated into their product development efforts:
- Developed multiple plug-and-play VOC Models and associated forms/tools in a collaborative team environment that can be used in various situations: customer visits, workshops, informal conversations, job site visits, and phone/email surveys.
- Managed VOC Database development.
- Developed and deployed VOC Process end-user training.
Voice of the Customer - Honeywell FM&T
While employed at Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, Kathy Toney, the President of Kent Business Solutions:
- Led a team to provide oversight and execution of an enterprise-level VOC process spanning two sites.
- Created an organizational framework for the future.
- Transformed a status quo team culture to a results-driven focus.
- Chartered focus groups to determine improvement needs to update a five-year old VOC process, which resulted in senior management’s approval and implementation.
- Drove team through two process improvement cycles in one year resulting in a simplified, streamlined process.
Business Capture Process - Honeywell FM&T
Kathy accomplished the following while employed at Honeywell:
Results were significant:
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White Paper Process - Honeywell FM&T
The White Paper Process development project is another example of a successful undertaking at Honeywell. Kathy led a team to create a process that allowed for creation of multiple, simultaneous white paper/proposal submissions.
Results include:
* "Unsolicited" opportunities were discovered through targeted data mining of the FedBizOpp website, the U.S. Government's primary website for posting Federal business opportunities.
Results include:
- New methodology improved document production efficiency ten-fold over previous paper/proposal requests.
- Honeywell garnered three wins and millions of dollars of new business over two years for two unsolicited* white papers and one unsolicited proposal. *
- This process was developed on-the-fly when Kathy coordinated the development of 10 white papers within a period of three weeks in response to a major U.S. Government agency’s request. This fledgling process helped ensure submissions met the deadline.
- Results from this paper call involved the acceptance of nine papers for wider distribution within the U.S. Government. It's noteworthy that one paper was submitted during the previous year's paper call (when no process existed), and it was rejected.
* "Unsolicited" opportunities were discovered through targeted data mining of the FedBizOpp website, the U.S. Government's primary website for posting Federal business opportunities.
Tailorable Quality Plans - Honeywell FM&T
The Tailorable Quality Plan project was launched due to customers complaining about paying too much for the only option Honeywell offered at the time...top notch quality on all products. Kathy led a team that:
Results included:
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