Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 - (Page 15)

Lucite already has a 25% global share of the essential ingredient in making acr ylics — MMA. The company has 14 manufacturing sites around the world, from Beaumont, TX, and Memphis, TN, to Ibaraki, Japan, and Southampton, England. Operational efficiency is driven by an internal manufacturing excellence program, which the company claims has added more than 50% to manufacturing capacity over the last decade at a capital cost of less than 20% of the investment in a new brown field site. The company has achieved much of that by being innovative with what it has. Lucite uses an Siemens’ latest innovation strategy is aimed at developing simpler products and services for fastgrowing, emerging economies. overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) metric to benchmark and improve existing operations, rather than continually spending more on equipment alone. Lucite has also applied innovative methods and technologies to create a revolutionary approach to the MMA manufacturing process. Its patented Alpha Technology system, which will go live this year at a new Singapore plant, claims to cut traditional methods of acrylic ingredient production from six to two steps, uses different raw materials, eliminates costly waste streams, and aims to make the process 40% more cost-effective. “We believe this kind of innovation will be a step change in the global economics of the acrylics industry,” says Lucite CEO Ian Lambert. The United Kingdom’s British Telecom, meanwhile, has taken a novel approach to innovation value creation. BT found that its internal New Ideas scheme was so successful and so excited external partners and corporate customers that the company now offers the innovation process as a revenue-generating consultancy service. “The fish are jumping into the boat. We would be mad to pass up the opportunity,” says Gordon Wright, innovation consultant in BT’s internal corporate technology group. Supply-chain logistics carrier DHL, part of Deutsche Post World Net, does a lot of its advanced thinking at a dedicated Innovation Center outside Cologne, Germany. “Our benefit is that we are not operationally driven but are business solutiondriven,” says Keith Ulrich, the center’s director of technology and innovation. The DHL centre combines development and hands-on labs with an interactive customer showroom to prototype new supply chain ideas, such as in-package, temperaturesensitive RFID; new geo-information systems; and intelligent sorting robotics. “We will look for mid-term solutions and ideas across different business units,” Ulrich says. “We can bundle expertise from across the company. We can also draw from more academic institutions and from a wide range of customers because we are intermediate and neutral. That makes sense because the most important thing about having an idea is that you have some way of evaluating it.” Siemens innovation champion Requardt prefers the networked approach to a dedicated incubator like DHL. “I have had some bad experiences with ivory towers,” he says. “People get disconnected from the business.” Requardt is eager to ensure that doesn’t happen with Siemens’ latest innovation strategy, which is aimed at developing simpler products and services for fast-growing, emerging economies, such as China, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. It’s called SMART — simple, maintenance-friendly, affordable, reliable and robust, and timely to market — and it’s explicit recognition that products and services will have to be dif ferent in emerging economies from those created for the developed world. “Our goal is sustainable value through innovation,” Requardt says. “These markets will take a leading role in the world economy and offer an enormous opportunity for different approaches to innovation in the future.” But whether the innovation paradox is about making the business run more efficiently while thinking up great new product ideas, the problems of turning ideas into cash, or recognising the need to take a fresh look at innovation to serve shifting world markets, a company still needs to take the risk. “In the end,” concludes DHL’s innovation director Ulrich, “you need the ability to fail. There is higher uncertainty and higher risk ESOURCE CENTER in innovative projects — ARTICLES: whether they are operaInnovation: Why Are So Many Coming Up Short? tional or to drive new www.managingautomation.com/innovationpoll businesses. Companies Sustainable Innovation need to accept and supwww.managingautomation.com/innovation8 port this. Having a chamLighting Up Innovation pion on the board can be www.managingautomation.com/pmroundtableinnovate a big help.” ■ R September 2008 15 http://www.managingautomation.com/innovationpoll http://www.managingautomation.com/innovation8 http://www.managingautomation.com/pmroundtableinnovate

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Opinion By David Humphrey Starters Road Trip Part 1: Innovation or Efficiency? Part 2: The Innovation Gap Opinion By Lisa Bodell Special Report: Great Aspirations Supply Chain: The New Money Machine Product Design: Fruehauf Gets into High Gear with 3D CAD Business Intelligence: Food Distributor Turns Up the Heat on Manufacturers Software: Manufacturers Face SaaS Hurdles Dialogue Opinion By Pierfrancesco Manenti

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

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