Manjeet Sachdeva

The 2 ways suggested by Michael Porter for creating Competitive advantage are being cost effective and second creating a Niche, differentiation.
 
Example for cost advantage can succeed when an organization wants to penetrate at a great speed goes for mass production like FORD always produced Black color cars in beginning. Organizations shifting production bases closer to raw material sources or lower labour cost like garment industries in Bangladesh. 
Sometimes a skewed focus only on cost backfires when Quality is compromised specifically when affordable and more reliable products at a bit higher cost are available like the case of TATA Nano car failure as its too much focus on cost positioned it at the bottom and a promising product got killed.
 
2nd is Differentiation with Quality and related aspects like serviceability, customer focus and reliability.
Examples are many where organizations have created a niche and customer is ready to pay extra for these features. These products are invested heavily in for research and development, branding and Quality. Examples Rolex watches to say that they not only tell time but to say tell time of the owner to others will not be an over statement.
Many products carry a renowned name which have become synonym for Quality like Ferrari, BMW, Porsche automobiles.
These products create in downstream suppliers who also produce niche products and its whole ecosystem where others don't easily dare enter. The products continue to get premium for the niche.
 
 

The brilliant example is government changing the automobiles norms from BS4 to BS6 from April 2020. All automobiles manufacturers will have to redraw recertify and revalidate their stable and capable process meeting the current norms of BS4.
 
2nd example Government setting new requirements for pre-paid smart energy metering and more than 300 million energy meters to be changed all over India in a period of 5 years or so. Almost all energy meter manufacturers redrawing revalidating and getting their products approved for safety norms for pre-paid and remote cut off features. Again the stable and capable product not having prepaid and remote cut off feature will be rendered useless.
 
 

If lean is applied in absolute terms with no additional features or Bells and whistles the this will lead to a stagnation situation, with little or no scope for improvements in products or value addition.
 
These small additional features tease the boundaries of lean and play an important role in newer developments
 
The brilliant examples of bells and whistles in the past 15 years had been a camera in a mobile phone, pedometer in a wristwatch. 
 
These features create their own space and market and can become a niche.
 
I strongly advocate that such bells and whistles must be encouraged and given due respect for innovation and science.

Special processes are those where the output can not be judged or inspected immediately after its completion. The critical parameters control allows the process to run as desired.
However the performance over a period of time or validation of few samples shows that the process was capable of giving the desired result example electroplating, welding etc.
 
Special requirement are those which are expected out of product to exhibit well beyond its stated application
Example a 200 amps relay normally operates at 50 to 60 amps current however in case of any short circuit or such emergency it must safely disconnect load up to 3000 amperes.
 
The process control on making relay and design will ensure such a requirement well beyond the stated requirement.