About
Confidential client
In technology development, time is of the essence. But it is time to market AND at quality and performance levels that leads to delighted customers and shareholders.
It is also a reality that you can have all the time you want, but not all the time you need. With limited resources, it is essential that staff, facilities and money are deployed right, first time.
This is the essence of a risk-based approach to product and process development.
Assignment
In this story we describe how risk identification, management and mitigation qualified a new manufacturing technology in 6 months to build confidence for a multi-million dollar investment package. The project, a race against time to iron out many technical issues in the product formulation, process technology and operation.
The client needed to qualify the product to be on the end customer bid list. The manufacturing process design needed to be right.
Process
Process: A technology risk assessment process was developed and run for the client and used to assess and mitigate the key risks to commercialization. A mitigation plan fed the trial development programme with the critical information needed which focussed efforts and resources.
Results: The key decisions were the scale of manufacturing facility and understanding the technology development risks. Within a week the client’s development team had formulated a development programme with much more confidence compared to business- as-usual approaches. It allowed the client to build confidence in their process but also communicate down the chain with the end customer and build their confidence in ability to supply.
Outcomes: The client was entered onto the order bid-list above the competition resulting in a multi-million pound order being won. A new practice became embedded in “how we do things round here” that spread across other technology development activities.