Classic mini-case
Milwaukee electric Tools' Jackson Plant has little direct product development responsibility. Nevertheless, it plays an active role in the design process. Manufacturing-cell team members participate in new product development from the outset of the cycle under its design for manufacturability focus. The result, according to plant manager Harry Peterson, is the elimination of prototype and manufacturing start-up problems, and a 35 per cent reduction in time to market.

 
Speed:  1st Generation Speed Strategies

Introduction

The old saw "Time is money" is not quite true.  Time is a resource that needs to be managed, as does money.  Unlike money, time has two fixed limits which directly, dramatically and continuously impact business:  

  1. There are no more than 24 hours in a day; nor 365 days in a year
  2. We each have only our lifetime. Regrettably, that is not extendable.

George Stalk, one of the best thinkers in consulting, set fire to time-based competition strategies with a Harvard Business Review article in the early nineties.  Since that time, companies large and small, manufacturing and service have grown and increased their profits by focusing on time.

A word of caution: don't forget about value.  Time-to-market without value is meaningless.   Think of speed as value/time.

First Generation Speed Strategies

First generation competitors attacked operating processes such as manufacturing, product development, service delivery and administrative waste. Six elements summarize their approach:

  1. Define customer value sharply; then eliminate all work that produces little or no value.
  2. Shift from a cost and productivity model to one that aligns purpose, strategy and structure for speed and quality.
  3. Flatten the firm and bust organization silos.  Deploy multi-functional teams as an alternative.
  4. Re-design core work processes for speed
  5. Baseline cycle time and establish monitoring measures and systems
  6. Focus on learning faster; not just doing faster.

Note that first generation successes required little capital expenditures and were driven by organizational and cultural change rather than technical innovation.  That changes in the second generation.

Results

Large firms such as Ford, AT&T to medium sized firms such as Medtronic reduced time-to-market by 30-70%.  Procter & Gamble reduced clinical cycle time from 83 to 14 weeks and maintained it at that rate!  The improvements were significant in dollars as well as time.  A now famous McKinsey studied illustrated that in many cases, being on time, though over budget by 50%, could yield 30% higher profits over the life of a product or service.

©2000 Christopher Meyer