Andrea Payaro, Anna Rita Papa

(P&P Consulting & Service srl, Italy)

 

 

Abstract: The lean management is doing more with less by employing “lean thinking.” It involves never ending efforts to eliminate or reduce wastes in design, manufacturing, distribution, and customer service processes. This paper aims to: Adapt to marketing the wastes identified in the lean; Propose some tools that can contribute to the reduction or the elimination of wastes present in the marketing strategies; Measure the results of the application of these tools in the marketing strategies in a sample of 10 SMEs. Ten SMEs situated in the north east area of Italy are using this classification to identify the wastes in their marketing strategies. The main results are an increasing customer satisfaction, the standardization of processes and the reduction of process cycle time. Companies use mainly value stream mapping or makigami to eliminate non value added activities in their process. Two companies are adopting some CPFR applications. They reduced the number of out of shelf per month. All enterprises declare that this classification is a useful method to take evidence on non value added activities.

 

 

Key words: lean marketing; wastes; small and medium-sized enterprises

 

JEL code: M310