managing short product cycles lighting fixture design conference june 2014 brian price...

Managing Short Product Cycles

Lighting Fixture Design Conference

June 2014

Brian [email protected] & Applied Science

London - June 2014Lighting Fixture Design Conference

Agenda

Tools & Techniques

MyBackground

Time toMarket

References


One MonthDelay

1% SalesDecrease

1% Design CostOverrun

1% ProductionCost Overrun

Source - Reinertsen 1992

Time to Market

Benefits –

• Improve Quality• Resource

availability

• Reduce Costs• Resource

allocation optimized

• Market Advantage• Hit ‘hot markets’


Project Failure Rate

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20150%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Success

Polynomial (Success)

Challenged

Polynomial (Challenged)

Fail

Polynomial (Fail)

Year

Pe

rce

nta

ge

of

Pro

jec

ts

Source: Standish Report, Chaos Report


1. Delivering the Wrong Project– User involvement in requirements & Specs

2. Inadequate Management Support– Priority and corporate commitment

3. Scope Creep– Lack of scope control

4. Poor Project Management

5. Inadequate Timing– Either too long or too short

6. Poor People Skills– Internal & external to the team

7. Inadequate Resources

All easily fixed – so why aren’t they?

Reasons Projects Fail

Source: Standish Report, Chaos Report


My Background


The Challenges

Sustainability- Hype- Cost

Customer Expectations- Range- Reliability

New TechnologiesNew Markets

Fast Time-to-Market

Opportunity & Threat


Finish First


Launch

Fast Follower Strategy

Soft Launch

Kaizen & Kaikaku Improvements

Launch Support


A fast follower strategy balances the risks associated with innovation, against the loss of first mover advantage.

Innovative companies are more profitable, but require greater investments and are exposed to greater risk of product or market failure.

Fast followers can use competitors to open the market and follow with superior service. Microsoft adopts a fast follower strategy, compared to Apple Computers innovation strategy.

Fast Follower Strategy

Innovators

Fast Followers

Launch Risk


A soft launch allows fast time to market, with a robust, but less than fully featured product.

Cost exposure is controlled with limited market release and restricted volume.

Toyota adopted this policy for introduction of the Prius hybrid, which went through four generations in 10 years and was limited to <100k units/yr out of 7 million annual production until it was fully developed.

Volume ramps up once market is matured and product proves viable.

Soft Launch

Ann

ual V

olum

e

Start of Production

Time

Soft Launch

Full Volume


Once launched, products need scheduled updates and improvements for cost, quality and marketing reasons.

Changes should be aligned to key points e.g. model year updates, and be continuous incremental improvements (quality) and/or occasional step change improvements.

Improvement schedule should be planned as part of lifecycle planning, minimizing reactive changes to manage cost and investment write-off.

Improvements

AB

AB

Kaikaku – Radical, Dramatic Improvement

Kaizen – Continuous, Incremental Improvement


Initial care support for high risk launches (new technology, new markets, etc.), can provide customer confidence, manage brand perceptions with early issues and feedback valuable initial, real-world data on usage.

Rapid customer issue response is essential, including technical team support for field issues, dealer training and seamless repair/replace in the event of issues.

Early adopters are potentially highly valuable members of the development team, as well as evangelists for the brand.

Launch Support


Configuration

Product Lifecycle

Parallel Developments

Modularity

De-coupling


Plan product lifecycle, including decline and death.

Variant introduction, upgrades and replacement strategy must be in place prior to the start of concept design, let alone investments in tooling, in order to minimize unplanned write-off or replacement and maximize return on investment.

Plan complete portfolio of products to balance resource allocations and launch risk.

See Fujimoto, Reinertsen

Product Lifecycles


Pressure to minimize product development costs leads to reducing options early in the NPD process and developing a single configuration.

Set-based design, as used by Toyota and many other Japanese companies, develops viable alternative options to a late stage, allowing optimal product selection at point of launch.

Development costs are higher, but more than compensated by launching on time and with the right product for the market.

See Sobek & Ward

Parallel Developments

Option ‘A’

Option ‘B’

Option ‘C’

Time

Pro

duct

Opt

ions

Product Launch

Option ‘A’

Option ‘B’

Option ‘C’

Traditional Model

Parallel Model


Modularize products, systems and components to reduce risk. Use proven components from supply base.

Reduce launch risk with minimal new components, concentrating on customer observable features and benefits.

Component/feature level reuse improves economies of scale, reduces development costs and launch risk.

See Ulrich & Eppinger

Modularity


Features and systems are de-coupled to stagger launches, reducing cost and risk, whilst enabling product refresh.

Highly coupled products may allow more optimal features, but come with considerable launch risk/cost. Evaluate risk/benefits of coupled features to manage risk.

Mitigate high risk through de-coupling designs at the concept and configuration stage. Lifecycle plans for products, systems and features, will enable product launch risk management.

See Ward, Fujimoto

De-coupling Features

Body

Engine

G’Box

Time (Model Years)

Sys

tem

Lau

nche

s

Launch Separation

Body

Engine

G’Box


Lean & Agile

Voice of Customer

Agile Start-up Mentality

Concurrent Engineering

Testing & Validation


The voice of the customer needs to be at the heart of every activity.

Formal processes, such as QFD (Quality Function Deployment) and VSM (Value Stream Mapping), can be used to identify what adds value in an organization's activities and products.

Care should be taken with focus groups and customer feedback/surveys, as these require careful interpretation. Consider use of direct observation (industrial anthropology) and tap into internal and external expert opinion.

See Taguchi, Ohno

Voice of Customer


Engender a ‘start-up culture’ in your NPD teams. Give then resources, an overall objective and then get out of their way.

Empower the team to succeed by giving them ownership and remove barriers, especially bureaucracy that adds little value.

Identify all the things you currently do that you don’t need to do – and stop doing them! This generates the resources and capacity to work on new, high value work.

Fail often, Fail early.

Agile Start-up

Agile Process


Concurrent or simultaneous engineering involves key stakeholders (suppliers, manufacturing, customers, legislative bodies, etc.) being active participants in the product development process.

Where possible, geographically co-locate the team. Establish a virtual collaborative environment for dispersed teams. Delegate authority and align performance assessment with project success.

See Sobek & Ward, Clark & Wheelwright

Concurrent Engineering

Num

ber

of C

hang

es

Start of Production

Time

‘Over –the-Wall’Engineering

ConcurrentEngineering


Closely linked to knowing your customer, is the definition of appropriate sign-off criteria (validation testing). Industrial anthropology will define expected life and in-service environments.

Robust/appropriate testing reduces warranty cost and protect brand value. Avoid over-test, as this increases product cost for no added customer value.

The Taguchi loss curve can be applied to optimize the cost-of-quality and ensure testing adds value.

Long term testing can extend post-launch, as used in aerospace industry.

Testing & Validation

Des

ign/

Test

Pha

ses

Start of Production

TimeExtended Life Testing


Project Management

Risk Management

Leap-frog Development

Capacity Utilization

Knowledge Management


Successful project management is all about managing risk. Identify risks based on prior experience, expert opinion and scenario planning. Categorize risk by likelihood of occurrence and severity of impact.

Mitigate high risks, track moderate risks and accept low risks.

Risk mitigation strategies include:• Transfer/Insure• Eliminate/Avoid• Reduce/Accept• Alternative/Fallback

Risk Management


One method of compressing development times, is to ‘leap-frog’ design updates and changes to miss the immediate next phase.

This allows greater overlap of phases and more iterations of design prior to launch.

Careful tracking of design iterations and component test level is required to manage this activity, but it allows reduced waiting/lead time of prototypes.

See Reinertsen

Leap-frog Development

Time

Des

ign/

Test

Pha

ses

Time Compression


Thoroughly understand the capability, capacity and availability of all resources at your disposal (people, equipment, facilities, etc.).

Apply resources ensuring there is a critical mass to succeed. Queuing theory suggests max. load capacity should be ~70% to account for contingency and unknowns.

Front load resources on projects. Fewer projects, better resourced, ensure more success than teams spread too thinly.

See Goldratt

Capacity Utilization


Maximize knowledge capture and reuse through formal, structured systems. Encourage creation and dissemination of knowledge through valuing learning, competition (‘X’ Prize) and intellectual property bounty.

Utilize project collaboration sites and document repositories for information storage and retrieval – especially for dispersed teams and concurrent engineering environments.

Knowledge Management

Data Information Experience Knowledge Wisdom


Questions?


Bicheno. J. & Holweg. M., 2009. The Lean Toolbox. PICSIE Books

Brophy. A., 2013. Lean. Financial Times Guides

Clark. K. & Fujimoto. T., 1991. Product Development Performance. Harvard Business School

Collins. J., 2009. How The Mighty Fall. RH Business Books

Cooper. R., 2001. Winning at New Products. Basic Books

Goldratt. E., 1992. The Goal. North River Press

Haik. Y. & Shahin. T., 2011. Engineering Design Process. Cengage

Kendrick. K, 2004. The Project Management Tool Kit. AMACOM

Omerod. P., 2005. Why Most Things Fail. Faber & Faber

Oosterwal. D., 2010. The Lean Machine. AMACOM

Pandey. V., 2014. Decision Based Design. CRC Press

Reinertsen. D., 1997. Managing the Design Factory. The Free Press

Trott. P., 2012. Innovation Management & New Product Development. Pearson

Ulrich. K. & Eppinger. S., 2008. Product Design and Development. McGraw-Hill

Womack. J. & Jones. D., 2003. Lean Thinking. Simon & Schuster

Womack. J., Jones. D. & Roos. D., 1990. The Machine That Changed the World. Macmillan

Wheelwright. S. & Clark. K., 1992. Revolutionizing Product Development. The Free Press

References

managing short product cycles lighting fixture design conference june 2014 brian price...

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