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by Jeff Moad, MA Editorial Staff   | Abstract: | With low-cost competition breathing down their necks, manufacturers look to new product innovation for growth. Here's how you can become an innovation leader. |
Until recently, it was practically unheard of for engineers working in different business units within defense contractor BAE Systems' Electronics and Integrated Solutions (E&IS) Group to compare notes, much less collaborate on new product designs. Engineers in each of the 19,000-person group's five business units typically went their own way, ignoring the new product plans in other business units, even if that meant that more than one unit would end up spending time and money designing, say, the same type of sensor. "We didn't have a lot of insight into what our other units were doing that might be synergistic," recalls Adam Barnard, program manager at BAE's Johnson City, NY, facility. "We didn't have the ability to combine signal-processing elements from one unit with controls from another to obtain a new capability." Then, about a year ago, in an effort to cope with intensifying competition and rising customer expectations, officials at BAE decided to take a more structured, coordinated approach to how the group innovates. The E&IS group adopted a new set of processes under which various functions within each business unit -- engineering, manufacturing, and marketing, for example -- collaborated to create new product development roadmaps spelling out key customer requirements, new products planned, required technology, and development milestones. Then, using road-mapping software from Alignent Software Inc. (Carlsbad, CA), BAE was able to see where the new product development plans from different business units would intersect. And that, Barnard says, allowed BAE to begin to use technology from one business unit in new products from another, cutting development time and cost. [Click to continue] |