Due to the large and growing number of new product projects in the “pipeline”, FFr wanted to find a way to improve their speed-to-market cycle for new products while maintaining their high customer satisfaction rating and prioritizing those products with the highest potential for large profit.

Reason for Project:

• Reduce the time to launch a product once it has been approved for development.
• Improve the ability of functional areas to work together on new product launch (NPL) projects.
• Identify and fix “gaps” in the process that cause unnecessary delays in the NPL process.
• Improve the tracking of projects in the “pipeline” so that the project status is clear to customer service and management.
• Develop a better method for prioritizing product development projects so that all projects get completed in a timely manner and “best” meet FFr’s customer satisfaction and profit objectives.
• Reduce the amount of obsolete material created due to the NPL initiatives.
• Improve the link between the NPL process, the product bill-of-materials and the manufacturing operations.

Project Deliverables:

• Led the executive team through a system redesign of their new product design process using the Action Research process (Discovery, Feedback, Collaborative Design).
• Documented how the existing system operates through observations and interviews with the system stakeholders.
• Identified the key drivers that impact the speed of designing/launching new products.
• Developed a plan for implementing documented improvements over the next year.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Streamlined Process/Increased Speed to Market: The developed process significantly streamlined the product design/launch systems by eliminating some of the typical delay factors.
• Increased Capacity:  The new process design enhanced FFr’s ability to generate new designs by removing system delays, rework and non-value added activities.