By Leandre Adifon – Founder & CEO at Pyramid Base Technologies
Over time, as companies grow,
- They have too many product families, variants, components, and part numbers, (driven by acquisitions, market segments, geographies, etc.),
- Innovation is mostly reactive, siloed, and incremental,
- Product development is slow with a long, Time to Market (TTM),
- Cost reduction programs hurt quality,
- Supply chain, field installation, and service are mostly sub-optimized.
Unfortunately, these observations are not limited to some isolated companies, they are spread across the globe including some very respectable entities. Surveys of Integrated Product Development (IPD) teams and Senior Management teams of some of the companies, show two frustrated groups with different motivations.
Senior leaders continue to wonder why their companies are no longer innovating as they use to be. At every review, they must face the complaints coming from their sales force lamenting the lack of innovation and how their competitors are launching new products and services. They see their market share diminish and must face the temptation of getting into a price war which calls for cost reduction with the risk of compromising quality and performance. Re-organizations often come as the first attempts toward solution. The arrival of new managers gives a false sense of relief, as it only delays the re-emergence of the same issues.
Every time we meet with company CEO’s and get to this point, they become emotional and ask the inevitable question: “How do we become innovative, and start growing again?”
This is the reason I wrote this article.
While Senior Leadership is scratching its head wondering how to start growing again, IPD teams see new product budget cuts and mounting pressure on cost reduction programs. New ideas are not welcome, and quality is compromised. Customers take note and look for alternatives.
Fortunately, things do not need to continue going the same way. 35+ years of successful product development and co-authoring more than 40 patents have led to the way of Winning Innovation Excellence or WinnoveX® which is bringing companies to their innovation springtime with a fast pace competitive value creation, and market leadership.
What is WinnoveX®?
Many companies limit their innovations to the physical embodiment of their products whether it is hardware or software. Over time, however, as new technologies emerge, the existing solutions struggle to adopt them by making radical changes. Their failure to quickly adapt to changing solution landscapes is due to their entrapment into product physical architectures and their inherent business models. In fact, physical architectures are strictly technology dependent and struggle to change when new radical technologies emerge. WinnoveX® is a disciplined approach that starts from a clear understanding of the industry’s solutions seen from a “Functional Standpoint”. Functions do not change quickly over time, physical integrations do.
WinnoveX’s approach is based on Operational and System Analyses of the company’s industry and products.
The process revisits a company’s products from the functions they perform, leading to their functional architecture. Such an architecture is independent from any physical embodiment and is used to define product modules. In the exercise, some modules may coincide with existing ones and new ones may emerge. The result is to give the company a Modular Product Architecture (MPA) which becomes the foundation on which innovation, cost reduction, and quality of future products design, manufacturing, supply chain & logistics, installation, and service are built. Even the company’s organization is aligned with its MPA. The Physical Architecture comes after the Functional is fully defined. Modules are then grouped into sub-systems that define the system.
The modules once defined with their interfaces become the building blocks of every product or system. They simplify the product structure. They drive innovation as any module can be defined, designed, and manufactured anywhere in the world and get easily plugged into the rest through a standard interface, like a Lego piece. There is no need to change a whole product to meet a customer’s needs, only modules are updated. A competitor benchmarking is no longer based on their physical solutions but on the functions they perform. Customers buy solutions that are based on the functions they want to perform. As someone once said, “Customers are not looking for a drill. They want a solution to make a hole”.
The value of a product is based on its functions relative to its price.
Our Commitment
WinnoveX® is offered by Pyramid Base Technologies Company based in Mooresville, North Carolina USA.
We are committed to partnering with companies and helping them gain or regain their recognition as innovation leaders in the markets they serve, by reducing cost, improving quality and performance of their products, processes, services, and organizations.
They will Win their Way to Innovation Excellence. Our method and approach are summarized in our book entitled WinnoveX®.
For any inquiry, please contact us at: [email protected]
