Flatten the Pyramid and Speed Product Development

Many companies are still vertically structured and rely on established divisions for new product development, engineering, R&D, and manufacturing. In addition, the corporate office generally houses the marketing purchasing and financial functions, often at some distance from the more technically focused divisions. Negotiating a new idea through the divisional maze of such a corporation is a major obstacle to accelerated product development and commercialization. At Duracell, we found that adequate horizontal communications were absolutely essential to recognizing and seizing latent opportunities for development of new or improved products. The end result was a significantly improved alkaline battery product line, delivered from R&D to manufacturing in less than 18 months, compared to a more typical 36 months. The project is an example of how a vertical organization can function in a "flat" manner, resulting in a drastically reduced time-to-market for an historically slow-to-develop consumer product-batteries. Opportunity Identified A long-term advanced battery design had reached the lab prototype stage, and information about performance, cost and time to manufacture was presented to senior management. Shortly thereafter, a request for a similar update came from the division marketing head and his VP of manufacturing. During that discussion, some mid-term and near-term product strategies emerged. Their attributes and rough costs were estimated, and found to provide both consumer value and an attractive cost/benefit to the company. It was decided that the improvements necessary to make it a reality would not require heavy capital investment, although there were a couple of key manufacturing issues to be resolved that could adversely affect the cost to manufacture. The largest risk, however, was the chance of missing the product launch window, which would require diverting significant resources from existing programs. On top of these already challenging constraints was added the requirement to extend the technology to three additional products in the same time frame. Team Defined At that point the project had its sponsor--the senior vp of marketing. His commitment was to obtain support from manufacturing and engineering, both residing within his division. A cross-functional team was formed with participants from the engineering, marketing, finance, manufacturing, and R&D functions. Leadership initially came from R&D, since this product development was largely bypassing normal engineering verification. As the project activities moved into the plants, leadership was assumed by the product engineering manager. That transfer was essentially seamless as both engineering managers and plant technical managers were on the team from the beginning. Buy-in from the manufacturing managers became easy once the product features and marketing implications were presented. Marketing monitored progress closely since the advertising and promotional campaigns were coordinated with the product launch date. …