Newsletter SFI Norman

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1 Newsletter SFI Norman RESEARCH AREA 3, Quarter 2, 2013 This is the second quarter newsletter from SFI NORMAN in 2013 focusing on Research area 3 Product and Process Development. The aim is to keep the community up to date with the current research that is being carried out to address the challenges in the Norwegian manufacturing industry. The overall goal of this research area is to create a better understanding of core components and underlying characteristics associated with successful product realization, including internal company practices and processes as well as external enablers ranging from ideation phase through product development, product launch and reuse of both materials and life cycle knowledge. News From PhD candidate to PhD We are proud to congratulate Silje H. Aschehoug on successfully defending her PhD thesis, titled "Identifying, collecting, and compiling sustainability information relevant to Norwegian manufacturing firms", August The trial lecture was on the topic Sustainability as a driver for innovation and the quantification of sustainability as value adding in organizations. In the committee were; Professor Niels Henrik Mortensen, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (First Opponent), Associated Professor Sofia Ritzén, Kungliga Tekniska Høgskolan (Second Opponent), and Professor Torgeir Welo, NTNU (Committee Administrator). Silje's thesis focuses on sustainability in relation to product development and design by identifying, collecting, and compiling sustainability information that may contribute to build knowledge on sustainability issues. Increased knowledge and awareness on sustainability issues may further enhance firms ability and opportunity to develop and manufacture more sustainable products. Such sustainable products may be one way of adding value to products beyond the traditional aspects of functionality, quality, and cost, and thus increase firms competitiveness. Her research resulted in a sustainability information framework for manufacturing firms, which was tested out in case studies; three automotive suppliers and two furniture firms. Factors influencing the importance of sustainability information were also identified to be; business strategies and goals, sustainability leader vs. sustainability follower, sustainability knowledge and awareness, sustainability standards adherence, previous positive experience with sustainability information use, business context, customer type, as well as supply chain position. Factors influencing accessibility of such information were found to be; type of information generating activities the firms are involved in, customer type, relative strength between supplier and firm, the organization of inter-disciplinary teams, and organization of the HSE functions. Her defense was reflected and thorough, with a constructive dialogue between her and the opponents. The opponents showed great interest in her chapter on method - the second opponent so much that she said she would use it as an example for her students. Silje is now full time researcher at Sintef Raufoss Manufacturing still working with SFI Norman in addition to supervising students at NTNU.

2 KBD Forum The Norsk Industri sponsored KBD- Forum, Knowledge Based Development, seminar was held at Kongsberg March This is an important area for companies focusing on Systems Engineering and Lean Product development and this year Nammo, Kongsberg Automotive and GKN Aerospace were attending the seminar. Torgeir and Geir are part of the steering committee and thereby active in inviting speakers and arranging the seminar. This year we had headliners as Katherine Radeka from Whittier Consulting in USA and Stefan Bukk from Lean Development in Sweden. We also heard reflections on different product development challenges from leading companies in Kongsberg. In total the seminar attracted 55 attendees from 32 organizations. For more information and presentations, see; um/ CIRP conference SFI Norman Research Area 3 was well represented at the annually CIRP Design product development conference, this year held in Bochum Germany. Together, Torgeir, Christer, Geir and Sören presented three papers, representing all main topics described in work package number six. The scope for this year's conference was Smart Product Engineering: "Smart Product Engineering attempts to address these tremendous changes of both industrial products and engineering processes. In the context of product creation "smart" is not only a new fashionable word but refers to the following meanings: "clever", "intelligent", "ingenious" and "agile". Smart products are a new generation of products equipped with micro sensors, computing power and mobile communication capabilities i.e. smart phones. However, not only consumer goods but also industrial products can become "smart" if embedded intelligence is applied. Then they are able to react instantly to environmental changes and to communicate with IT infrastructures or with other products. Smart Product Engineering describes processes, methods and tools for the creation of these smart products." The following papers from SFI Norman were presented, and published in proceedings: 1. New Perspectives in the Quest for Unification of Lean with Traditional Engineering Design Methodology - S. Ulonska, T. Welo. 2. Assessing the Relationship between New Product Development Practices and Performance in the Norwegian Manufacturing Industry T. Welo, S. Aschehoug and G. Ringen. 3. Towards a Context-Driven Front End in New Product Development - C. Elverum and T. Welo. Upcoming event at Nammo Nammo welcomes the NORMAN family to workshop May 6-7 with focus on topics related to research area three. Nammo is a high-tech company located at Raufoss in Norway with core competence within development and production of ammunition, rocket motors, and shoulder-launched ammunition systems. Advanced use of high strength metals and polymer composites, and combinations of these, makes the company a preferred supplier to leading

3 defense system integrators around the world. The company has more than 2,000 employees in different production sites in six countries, and its ownership is equally shared between the Norwegian government and Patria from Finland. Product performance, quality, and reliability are main drivers in the defense and aerospace industry, providing strict guidelines for how product development projects are conducted. Moreover, it is not unusual that it takes year from concept to a qualified and customer-approved product is ready for delivery. This time horizon calls for focus and awareness of choosing the right concept along with followup of cost, time, and risk by stringent management routines throughout the different (sequential) project stages. The work shop will be held at Raufoss following the recipe developed over the last 2-3 years. We meet at Gjøvik for some food and informal meetings on Monday evening and start the day after at Raufoss for further insight into Nammo's innovation and product development processes. As before, the audience will be challenged to bring some new ideas to the host company ( Finalized PostDoc Kjersti Øverbø Schulte has recently finalized her postdoctoral project addressing innovation culture in manufacturing companies or how to enhance practice for successful innovation. There have been three main activities in the project: Empiric research in manufacturing companies, contribution to the development of the Innovation Culture demonstrator, and publications. She has analyzed different approaches to design processes, cooperation and communication in product development projects both in teams and between customers and suppliers. The following questions related to progressing product development processes are coined; 1) How to develop and underline a common set of arguments? 2) To what degrees should team effort and customer involvement be undertaken? A team of researchers have followed a process at Teeness through observations and interviews, and through organizing workshops. The focus has been early stages of a product development process in a manufacturing company. Based on this insight, they have developed a demonstrator with four digital learning histories that should facilitate reflections on innovation culture companies. The stories are presented by film, text and figures. Industrial demonstrators Tine Lean product development is an important issue within research area 3. The majority of the SFI Norman companies have participated in a large survey concerning lean product development performance as reported in the newsletter for Q Research from this survey is still on-going and will continue also in The rationale behind the survey is to assess and understand current lean product development practices in the Norwegian manufacturing industry, so that companies can establish strategies for closing the gap between current performance and best-practice in areas critical to their performance. Broken down to company level, a workshop was performed with Tine Product Development in Groruddalen, Oslo, in November hosted by Geir Ringen, Kjersti Schulte and Silje Aschehoug. Tine participated with representatives from Groruddalen, Stavanger and Verdal. In the workshop and they were given a "crash introduction" to lean product development, and presented their main results from the survey. The workshop also included reflection circles concerning areas critical to their performance and issues Tine Product Development would like to continue working with. In 2013, a follow-up workshop will be held with a more in-depth focus on

4 critical areas important to product development. Plasto reflections and results from work shop in May 2012 One of the main research topics in Research area 3 in NORMAN is how companies can improve their ability to innovate. Together with the host company Plasto, we saw the workshop in May 2012 as a unique opportunity to both boost idea generation related to real life challenges for Plasto as well as test a few hypothesis regarding open innovation in SMEs. Small and medium-sized enterprises often face lower than desired innovation success rates due to factors such as high risk level, high complexity, and the inherent uncertainty in the innovation process often referred to as the "liability of smallness" meaning they may have limited time, financial resources, smaller R&D departments, less multidisciplinary competence and less structured R&D processes. In sum, these factors pose great challenges for SMEs struggling to find its place in the global market place. However, advantages of being small can be explained by less bureaucracy, responsiveness to changes, and having more specialized knowledge. Open innovation is suggested by other researchers as one path in which SMEs may collaborate in networks to overcome their "liability of smallness". The latter motivated us for selecting theme and host company for this workshop. In preparing for the workshop we had several meetings between the research team and Plasto to determine which "innovation challenges" that could be suitable for discussions among participants at the SFI Norman workshop and the following themes were chosen: 1) Which other markets may be explored with today's products and technologies, and which other which other products may be produced with today's technology? 2) For a specific aquaculture product define a new productand process concept which allows to scale-up production from a few to several million units per year. 3) Explore a given (existing) product and come up with ideas how this product can be utilized in combination with other products or in new markets? The workshop started with an intriguing brief to the Romsdal area and business life, followed by an indepth walk-through in Plasto's production facilities. The participants were then given an introduction to creativity techniques relevant to innovation by Professor Erik Lerdahl. The participants were also given Lerdahls book on idea generation, "Slagkraft". Working in groups with ideageneration, a total of 272 ideas were generated. The quality of these ideas was assessed by the criteria Novelty, Usefulness, Feasibility and Effectiveness for implementation. This judgment was done by the CEO, Lars Stenerud, who was positively surprised by the overall amount and quality of the ideas. Of course, some ideas were too far from core business to pursue, but nearly a year after the workshop some ideas from innovation challenge 2 have already been prototyped and tested. Moreover, some of the general ideas were discussed during the yearly strategy process. The CEO recommends that good ideas not suitable for their company should be included in an "ideas stock exchange" open for the other NORMAN companies. The idea generation session was made possible thanks to 40 enthusiastic members of the NORMAN family and the general feedback is that such workshops may be efficient and a useful way of providing SMEs ideas and information concerning new markets, new technologies, and new product ideas. It is fairly simple to implement, but requires a network of industrial partners that have demonstrated trust and willingness to contribute. The workshop has resulted in a recent article which has been accepted for publication at the 19th International Conference on Engineering and Design (ICED 13) and will be presented later this year. Benteler Together with Benteler we set out to improve the method and process of Engineering Change Orders. The marginal profitability in the automotive market calls for costeffective and price favorable

5 solutions when the customer asks for changes during product development. This is a complex process involving many resources, systems and departments globally requiring a structured approach to map and improve the process. Status PhD Christer Elverum The research topic in Christer Elverum s PhD research is the fuzzy front end (FFE) of new product development (NPD) in the automotive industry i.e. the phase of the development that takes place before the more structured (typically stage-gate governed) NPD process. The studied industry has, however, changed drastically in several areas. The products are vastly more complex, esp. through incorporating a myriad of mechatronic and IT systems, and the competition between the various manufactures is higher than ever before, resulting in ever decreasing innovation cycle times. To be able to bring increasingly more complex products to market at a low price the focus has in large parts been on refining the new product development process, as well as extensive use of formal processes. It is well known that highly structured ways of working, though efficient, can inhibit creativity and thereby reduce the degree of newness and innovation. Therefore, the majority of automotive manufacturers have established satellite front end departments. These departments operate more freely than the structured development departments of the company, giving the employees the freedom and resources to explore possible future concepts without being inhibited by highly formal processes. Organizing a company or more precisely a company network in this manner can however be challenging. A key question is how to manage the integration of these satellite departments with the rest of the company? To investigate these challenges Christer has managed to find extremely interesting case companies the front end departments of four automotive manufacturers in the Silicon Valley area in California. Christer is currently visiting researcher at Stanford University. Recent publications Aschehoug, S.H., G. Ringen, et al. (2012), Investigating the Importance of Sustainability Information in Product Development and Design, The Ninth Norddesign Conference, Aalborg, Denmark, The Design Society & Center for Industrial Production. Gudem, M., Steinert, M., Welo, T. and Leifer, L. (2013), Redefining Customer Value in Lean Product Development Design Projects, Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp Welo, T, Olsen, T.O. and Gudem, M. (2013), Enhancing Product Innovation through a Customer- Centered Lean Framework, International Journal of Innovation and Technology management, vol. 9, No. 6. Ringen, G. and Welo, T. (2013), Towards a More Event-Driven NPD Process: First Experiences with Attempts of Implementation in the Front-End Phase, ICED, Seoul, Korea. Aschehoug, S.H. and Ringen G. (2013), Open Innovation and Idea Generation in SMEs, ICED, Seoul, Korea. Welo, T. and Ringen, G. (2012), NPD Practices in the Norwegian Manufacturing Industry: Assessing the Relationship between Key Dimensions and Performance, ISPIM, Seoul, Korea. + the three publications mentioned above related to CIRP Bochum.