Final Customer Purchasing from the Product Producer

Maintain Steps: Maintain steps include all activities required to keep the product in working order. These steps include the costs the customer incurs to diagnose and correct product problems.

B.
Resources: Reduce resources required for the use of the product

2. Time – Reduce the time the customer must spend with the product

b. Reduce steps the customer must use with the product

Reduce customer steps in the product process
Modify product to reduce maintenance
Increase the quality of the product to reduce customer time in repair

Improve the initial quality or durability of the final product

No.	SIC	Year	Note
1	1521	2004	Since instituting new customer care procedures and more careful contractor training programs two years ago, KB Home homebuilder's warranty claims are down 90%, while lawsuits and legal expenses have fallen 20%, even though the company is building 25% more homes.
2	2813	2004	Air Liquide, the French producer of industrial gases found a way to produce gasses in small plants on-site at customers' factories. Staff is stationed permanently at client sites -putting them in a prime position to help customers improve operating efficiency and increase output quality. These teams are given greater autonomy and able to act on new opportunities. These high-margin services constitute about 25% of Air Liquide's revenues.
3	3400	2003	Bundling, a proccess of customizing and engineering in the bearings and parts industry, is increasingly common among both suppliers and buyers, reducing the amount of suppliers, eliminating routine labor and assembly. Overall, bundling advances quality and improves reliability.
4	3571	2003	The smaller computer brands are often built with higher performance components. The machines aren't loaded down with prepackaged software like the bigger names like to add. The smaller brands also offer more personal customer service.
5	3576	2004	Cisco is taking a gamble with the HFR as the company is scrapping the software included in nearly every Cisco product since the company was founded two decades ago in favor of a new operating system designed to make the router easier to maintain and manage.
6	3600	1998	Technology has changed the paper industry game somewhat. Modern office and home equipment can tolerate a wider range of paper quality. Office paper quality itself has improved as paper makers updated equipment.
7	3651	2005	High-end digital cameras that sell for less than $1,000, like Canon's Digital Rebel XT, Nikon's D70 or D50, don't offer the same advantages as a professional camera. Most point-and-shoot digitals offer the space-efficient JPEG format, often with three levels of quality. There is a difference in quality over time between JPEG formats, because it discards, and thus loses, some data each time an image is opened and then recompressed when closed. Formats like TIFF (Tagged Image Filled Format) and RAW (unprocessed) use much more memory than JPEGs but preserve quality. TIFF doesn't discard any of the digital image data, even pros who shoot in JPEG often make a point of saving a master image in TIFF for editing and reuse. RAW approximates a digital negative, it can take up more memory than JPEG but about half as much as TIFF. You can adjust the color or sharpen the contrast. However, the RAW programs offered on many cameras is not compatible with other processing programs. PhotoShop can help with this problem.
8	3651	2002	When portable MP3 players hit the market in 1998, they were a breakthrough because they had no moving parts like a spinning CD or cassette tape. The music files were stored on flash memory, making players light, compact and skip-proof.
9	3674	1998	There have been significant quality differences between Japanese and U.S. Semiconductor products. Users of U.S. and Japanese devices discovered that Japanese memory products had defect rates that were one-half to one-third those of comparable U.S.
10	3711	1993	Cadillac's Seville Touring Sedan had a wimpy engine. Cadillac introduced a new engine–4.6 liter, aluminum, 32-valve V-8, delivers 290 foot-pounds of torque and 295 horsepower. It won't need a tuneup for 100,000 miles.
11	3711	2000	In an effort to develop maintenance-free vehicle solutions, Visteon Corporation is introducing another Visteon first — a factory-installed Long Life Filtration System designed to virtually eliminate filter maintenance over the lifespan of a vehicle.
12	3716	2001	After the combination of a strong economy, retiring boomers and loose credit in the 1990's created strong demand, RV and mobile home makers are struggling with lower demand, increased manufacturing capacity and unpaid debt. Now, manufacturers are focusing on quality, adding additional space and traditional home accoutrements.
13	3751	1988	Harley made big progress since 1981 in decreasing the number of defects per motorcycle. 99% of motorcycles coming off assembly line were defect free in 1986, compared with about 50% in 1981.
14	5621	2001	Chico's uses basic easy-care fabrics with loose fit and bright colors for their garments which range from about $20 to about $150. Their new items are well-marketed, though their clothing is meant to last throughout many seasons as basic items.

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