BACKGROUND
MDS SCIEX is a division of MDS Inc., Canada's
largest and most diversified health and life sciences company.
MDS SCIEX exports 90% of its products to more than 50 countries
through a marketing alliance with PE Corp. MDS SCIEX was
born out of the need to analyze material on the initial
NASA Martian expedition project and has grown from a research
organization to a world leader in the research, design and
manufacture of mass spectrometers. The organization has
prided itself on its research talent and on its earlier
ability to deliver innovative solutions to the market place.
In the early 1990's, MDS SCIEX lost its ability to deliver
new ideas to the market in a timely fashion. However, it
never lost its ability to generate new ideas. By the mid
1990's significant effort was directed at improving the
organization's ability to deliver new ideas to the marketplace
through the use of recognized time-to-market techniques.
MDS SCIEX employs more than 350 highly skilled
professionals, with nearly half of our workforce in scientific
research, product engineering and software development.
The early culture of MDS SCIEX was focused on the development
of fundamental science and is changing to one that must
focus on the building of commercial products. The current
design culture is stimulated by difficulty and complexity,
dislikes routine activities and tends to trivialize objections
to design directions. Project teams at MDS SCIEX are persistent,
seeking new challenges once a problem is solved. They are
pragmatic, constantly demanding proof and debating every
angle. They prefer to generate their own systems and process
changes rather than adapt to changes imposed externally.
THE
CHALLENGE
The new millennium will find most organizations
facing tremendous competitive pressures. Their struggle
to maintain their market positions will negatively impact
which is affecting their ability to grow as more resources
are focused on short rather than long-term issues. Gone
are the days of when restructuring, re-engineering, right
sizing, mergers and acquisitions alone were enough to improve
would add to the bottom line. According to leading business
gurus are predicting that the single most critical factor
for business success in the next century will be innovation.
The definition of innovation used in this
paper has a business orientation:
Innovation is the translation of a new idea
into a product and/or service which is delivered to the
marketplace within a window of opportunity and which meets
the market's quality, performance and cost expectations,
and the organization's profit requirements.
By late 1997 MDS SCIEX was looking for ways
to build a competitive advantage through improved innovation
strategies. Like most companies, MDS SCIEX believed that
employee development programs aimed at innovation and creativity
skills would have a positive impact on the organization's
bottom line. An innovation skills program, accompanied by
a rigorous impact assessment would provide the opportunity
to test this belief.
SETTING
THE STAGE
In early 1998, the MDS-SCIEX Product Development
group had an objective to develop a product to capture a
market segment from a major competitor within a narrow window
of opportunity. Additional challenges included the lack
of familiarity with the technology by the Product Development
group, the existence of a competitor's product in the market,
the need to compress the development schedule, the need
to expand the vendor group, and the expectations of MDS
SCIEX's executives relying on the project to create a new
third product line for the organization. The project to
deliver this product was code named Athena and was
to become the largest single project in MDS SCIEX's history.
The most important aspect of the project was
the need for the Product Development group to work very
closely with the Research group. This would ensure that
the critical technical characteristics of the product were
retained in the transfer from the research breadboard to
a fully commercialized product. This would require both
engineers and scientists to collaborate outside their natural
domains of expertise.
As is traditional in most organizations, design
conflicts between engineers, scientists, manufacturing,
and vendors existed in abundance. These conflicts surfaced
regularly at the project review meetings held during the
development of the product, resulting in delays in design
and manufacturing, cost overruns, both organizational and
interpersonal conflicts, and lack of consensus in the final
design. An analysis of previous projects revealed that most
design review conflicts centered on the following:
The Athena group needed to find a way to promote the timely
generation and constructive review of ideas, proposals,
and design solutions while avoiding the conflicts of past
design review meetings. With the Athena project constraints
and objectives clear, the stage was now set to allow the
opportunity to attempt to improve the product development
process with an innovation skills program.
CREATING
THE ENVIRONMENT
The innovation program was aimed at a variety
of design issues i.e. creating new options, working collaboratively
to solve problems, and building consensus. A core group
of senior managers selected and promoted an innovation
skills program based on Edward de Bono's Six Thinking
Hats.
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The main reasons for selecting the Six Thinking
Hats included the following properties of the technique:
- harnesses focused thinking within a flexible process
(appealing to most engineers)
- discounts the belief that creativity is the domain
of only selected people
- generates consensus
- depersonalizes criticism
All project staff including external design consultants
assigned to the Athena project were trained in the use of
the tool. The training was provided by the senior managers
who selected the tool and became certified to deliver the
employee training. In addition, the training was also rolled
out to other areas of the organization.
The Athena project manager encouraged his team to use their
new skills for appropriate project-related work, and planned
the agendas of all Concept, Preliminary, Code and Critical
Design Review meetings to incorporate the new technique.
Team members were also encouraged to use the technique on
an ad hoc basis in their daily work.
