Tag Archives: Innovation

New Product Development….

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productLifecycleis vital to maintain a companies revenue growth. All products have a similar lifecycle which ends with declining revenue although the timescale between introduction and extinction may be anywhere between a few weeks to decades.

Unless New Product Development brings a steady stream of products to market the companies revenue will gradually decline.

Of course it is vital that the products being developed have a clearly defined market otherwise the costs of development will outweigh any increase in revenue.

Being in touch with the customers needs is the only way to increase the rate of success.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

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Why time to market is critical…

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Are your products taking to long to develop and adversely affecting your revenue stream ? Time to Market  is absolutely critical in determining product revenue and payback. With product lifecycles becoming ever shorter as new, better, faster models are introduced the development timescale is critical to success. Every day lost in development is a day lost in sales. This is because the overall lifecycle of the product is reduced the longer the development takes.

This may, at first, seem counterintuitive as the product is deemed to have, say, a 12 month sales life following release to the market but this takes no account of the competition which may already have a better model in development. Consequently each day of lost sales is gone forever and never recovered.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition and maximize payback for your developments you need to minimize product development timescales.

No one should pretend that this is easy. There is a fine balance to be struck between developing a quality product which meets the customers requirements as well as any in-house and external Quality approvals. The product development process needs to be robust and well defined.

Your in-house development process will probably be similar to the typical ISO9001 process below.

ISO9001designprocess

Sometimes the only way to generate time to market reduction is to have a look at the process with a fresh “set of eyes”

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

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ESA launch fuels global warming debate..

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The successful launch and deployment earlier today of the European Space Agency’s Cryosat-2 satellite represents a tremendous achievement for the organization. The satellite will measure and track ice thickness in the polar regions providing invaluable data for environmental scientists. Hopefully this data will prove , one way or the other, that global warming is indeed a fact and is caused by man’s activities and needs to be addressed politically in a united and effective manner.

The Scientific project has been ably led by Professor Duncan Wingham of the University College London who commented:-

“Today, it’s just a real pleasure; and I speak on behalf of all the scientists who will use the data to just thank all of those many people who contributed to this mission. Personally, it’s been a fabulous ride for me,” he told the assembled guests at the German centre.

Congratulations Professor Wingham & all at ESA for the successful launch of this incredible Scientific venture.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

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Great idea…but why won’t it sell ?

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stupidinventionThis is one of the most common questions in the world of New Product Development and is often asked after the developer has spent thousands of dollars in development costs.

Here are some possible answers:-

1) Who says your product is “great” ?  many  companies develop new products because they think it’s a great idea – unfortunately no one else does. It may seem obvious but New Products have to meet a market demand in order to sell. Just because your design engineer thinks its a great idea doesn’t mean anyone else does.

2) Does anyone know about your great new product ?  What is your Marketing and Advertising strategy. Unless your Innovation is publicised how will anybody find out about it ?

3) Is your product overpriced ?  What is the nearest competitor selling at ?

4)  Is it priced too low and perceived as cheap ? Ask yourself this question – When you buy a car do you buy the cheapest model available ?

5) What level of service and support do you offer with your product ? – Is the competition offering a better warranty or service.

All common sense but sense aint that common.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

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The Innovation game…

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innovationInnovation is the name of the game; especially in the competitive world of consumer electronics. The only way to remain competitive is to continue to produce new, relevant products which the customer wants.

Apple is a terrific example, before the release of the ipod Apple was a company on decline; despite the fact that it had the worlds best desk top computers for graphic design and desk top publishing they were too expensive for the home computer market which was cornered by IBM clones.

Then along came the ipod, the revolutionary pocket music player which was cool, trendy, affordable and  desirable.

The rest is history and Apple also leads the field in Smartphones with their iconic iphone. Recently they have released their latest product, the touchscreen notebook – the ipad.

These are terrific examples of product Innovation in the highly competitive field of consumer electronics which show that a company which continues to innovate will continue to thrive.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

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The Brain Machine….

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brainmachineThere has been lots of recent talk from politicians, particularly The Conservative Party, about rejuvinating British Industry. Indeed James Dyson, the renowned inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner which bears his name, recently issued his  Ingenious Britain  report on the subject.

Such debate is welcome and well overdue. With manufacturing in the U.K shrinking to around 10% of GDP we urgently need a strategy which focuses on what we do best – Innovation.

There is no way we can compete with Far East manufacturers on cost (labor or Capital) but we can and do compete strongly when it comes to Innovative design and technology. This is partly due to our strong engineering history and professional project management skills. It is also down to our open and democratic culture which leads to a rigorous debate of ideas.

We have a wealth of scientific and engineering talent in the U.K which we can exploit to deliver new and innovative products to the worlds markets.

We need to rev up the Brain Machine.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

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Outsourcing trends point to further job losses…

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SPA032The outsourcing market is a large, diversified and complex model but it is still possible to discern some notable trends:-

1) The manufacturing industry in the West looks likely to continue to shrink, according to Electronics Times the U.S semiconductor industry lost 107,000 jobs between 2001 to 2009 and some predictions estimate a further loss of 146,000 jobs from 2008 – 2018 – Scary stuff.

2) The latest Labour Market Outllook report from CIPD suggests that 10% of all UK companies intend to outsource some work in 2010 with 41% of I.T companies planning to outsource key activities.

3) According to the Bangkok Post the Outsourcing market was worth $24.9 billion at the end of Q4 2009 up 8% on the previous year.

4) An interesting observation is that Chinese & Indian companies are looking at Outsourcing within their own National boundaries. This is perfectly understandable given both countries vast size and untapped resource. We may see a gradual migration of economic activity from coastal areas inwards.

All of the above highlights the need for Western companies to accellerate Innovation to stay ahead of the value curve.

It also suggests that Western governments need to look very carefully at their strategy for Manufacturing and Innovation if they want to preserve what remains of the High Technology sector to provide skilled employment in the future.

As per usual Cash is King.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

www.projectsguru.co.uk

The act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

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manuprocessRecent statistics show that manufacturing in the UK is now as low as 11% of GDP and employment in manufacturing has fallen by a massive 9% since Sept 2008.

Staggering figures – so what’s the solution, if in fact one is needed.

As manufacturing jobs are generally well paid compared to the rest of the economy and as each manufacturing role supports a number of others in the supply chain it would seem logical that an increase in the number of manufacturing jobs will lead to a more diversified and robust economy.

So, how do we go about generating more manufacturing jobs. Do we introduce tariffs on Chinese goods ?  Impose extra duties on imports ? – we could do this but in the end we may do more damage to British business than good.

Many companies have survived by outsourcing activities to China, the Far East and elsewhere and whereas some would argue this has cost British jobs the counter argument is, that without outsourcing, these companies would have gone bust and cost even more jobs.

Capitalism is a dynamic competitive environment and, like its biological counterpart, the most able to adapt will survive.

Wherever a company or organization exists, in order to compete, survive and thrive it needs to Innovate.

It needs to develop new products and services and bring them to market.

In the current climate this is even more critical.

Innovation enables the most able to adapt to survive.

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The real cost of time to market delays….

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p4Anyone involved in New Product Introduction (NPI) knows how critical time to market is but do they know how to quantify it?

If a product has a predicted lifecycle of x years the assumption must be made that sales will cease x years after product launch i.e at product “death”.

If the launch date is delayed by 2 months the original product “death” should remain the same. Any product will only be viable until its successor is released by its originator or the competition. The result is a loss of 2 months of sales which will have a real monetary value. This is a perfectly reasonable proposition as there is no logic in assuming that the competitors next product will be late just because yours is !

This enables us to quantify project delays in terms of real dollars. Great news for Senior Management but also good news for the project manager as it allows us to justify additional project resource or equipment in order to meet the original project timescales.

Remember – if your Senior Management has not provided the resource you budgeted for to bring the project in on time quantifying time to market losses in monetary terms is a great leveraging tool.

In the bleak midwinter……

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winter 006

In around 5 months time the people of the U.K will go to the polls to elect the Government for the next parliamentary term.

Over the last 13 years of Labour government manufacturing output has declined dramatically from around 20 % of GDP to around 11% today.

The Economy has become grossly inbalanced in favour of the Financial Services and Property sectors. This has proved disastrous and has contributed to the deepest recession we have seen in a lifetime.

To rebuild a robust economy we need a mixed economy in which manufacturing plays a major and significant part.

It’s easy to be cynical about Political parties but it’s interesting to visit the main parties websites to find out what their policies are towards the Economy and manufacturing in particular.

You may be surprised by what you find.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

www.projectsguru.co.uk