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The product development newsletter no 3 |
| Topic: What makes for success, part 2 |
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| The key factors that make firms’
product developments successful (continued) |
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| Following on from last month, there are two further factors that the
best use to ensure commercial success. |
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| Factor 3: Excellent technical expertise is essential, both to
surveying new technologies continually and to apply experience to make
really good use of current technology and design methodologies. |
| You would be amazed at how few companies are using the best available
skills or knowledge to devise their products. Virtually none had a good
process for capturing ideas that are out there already, or discovering what
others already knew that could be applied to improve cost and performance,
especially from other industry sectors. Some related to the benefits that
alternative materials could contribute - materials knowledge was generally
sketchy. Other deficiencies related to technology principles and data that
were not being applied. |
| Computer simulation of performance is becoming more affordable with
time. Some quite small companies make brilliant use of it to cut development
costs and optimise performance impossible by other means. It can more than
halve the cost of verification testing. Not enough companies take the time
to become aware of what is possible. |
| For some products, better appearance would have persuaded more customers
that the product was as professional as its performance. They were poorly
designed because the company did not understand the benefit of using good
industrial design input at the concept stage. The UK probably has the best
industrial design industry in the world; it seems to be used and appreciated
more by our overseas competitors than by us. |
| We were surprised by these findings. We all assumed that a company would
naturally be aware of the best that their specialisms demanded. The best
were so because they were very aware. And usually this went hand-in-hand
with a well-practised concept stage that gave time to formulate alternative
ideas - they built this into their process. Maybe that is a key to success
because less successful companies skimped or avoided doing it. |
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Factor 4: Excellent programme management brings their products to
market on time. |
| When we ran a project relatively recently with the Royal Academy of
Engineering (the engineering equivalent of the Royal Society for scientists)
we found that most companies were late to market, over-ran their development
budget; or if they did neither, compromised either the product’s performance
or manufacture cost to meet budget. |
| Few managed to bring their products to market on time and at the target
manufacture cost. And unbelievably, (to me, at any rate) few monitored the
manufacture cost during development; even fewer planned how to manufacture
it right from the outset when concepts were being considered. It was often
the financial manager who pointed out that it was above target cost a couple
of quarters after launch when they could see the financial data. |
| Why does this happen? We found that the basis for this under performance
was that most companies’ process was poor. Most process manuals had rich
detail for the later project stages, but skimpy or non-existent on the
initial stages. Unfortunately it is the initial stages that set the
foundation for the later ones, and a house built on sand... predictable
outcome. |
| Why does this happen? Usually because the (business) process is just not
taught in full detail. Everyone has their own interpretation and they all
differ. We’ve probably all been taught how to design a product; but that’s
only part of the product development process. |
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Over the past 9 years, we’ve analysed in depth why more than 70 really
successful companies succeed. We continually update this analysis. The
finding is interesting. Everyone does it differently, but to a common
underlying and universal baseline blueprint. It can be learned and applied -
it’s not rocket science. Virtually none did all of it well; but doing two
thirds was usually enough to ensure success. The few who did all of it were
brilliant. |
| The best devise a bespoke project for each product: no two projects have
the same requirement and if you force them all down the same path, they
drown in bureaucracy and stifle innovation. But the bespoking still uses the
same baseline blueprint to plan and execute them. |
| In some companies poor performance was caused either by a lack of
support from the top, or diktat from the MD to do activities that bucked the
process, usually short-cutting it through not understanding the knock-on
effect this had in later stages. In one case, this caused the technical
director to resign in frustration. |
| And in most cases, irrespective of process, companies did not use a
product team (called by some, their “integrated product team”) with
representation right thought the project from all areas the product touched.
The process did not require it. So not all information was available in the
early stages, and work had to be re-done when information was discovered
later. The usual cause was marketing, production or installation/service not
realising exactly what was being designed; at the earliest stage they had
not been asked for (or contributed) information they had known all the time.
This cause alone probably triggered half of all the changes. The remainder
came from simple mistakes not spotted, revisions to reduce cost,
specification changes and changes because the product would not attain
performance. The cause of all was the same: inadequate early involvement.
The result is a raft of iterative work that can double time and project
cost. |
| Next month we’ll conclude this set of factors that are required for
success. These are really ‘soft’ cultural issues. Unless they’re in place,
the detail process invariably goes wrong. |
