Companies allocating time for their best and brightest to innovate is not a new school of thought. Many, technology based and otherwise, have realised that the return on investment of allowing employees to work autonomously on projects of their own choosing is substantial. This is not the case in the SME sector where people tend to be employed on task roles that are easy to measure and are perceived to give value but will little innovativeness.<\/p>\n
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\nWe struggle as SME managers to embrace our employees to dabble with new technologies that we see as a waste of time but fail to see the learnings this dabbling can create and the greater job satisfaction for the employee. But for SME companies to evolve from manufacturing companies to solution providers it must be embraced and realise the reward will outweigh the risk.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/keltech.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/DW-1.png\")
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A good example of a company who are the forefront of this thinking is 3M
\nBill Coyne, a former senior vice president of R&D at 3M encourages all engineering staff to spend 15% of their time on their own ideas.
\nMost of the inventions that 3M depends upon today came out of that kind of individual initiative\u2026 You don\u2019t make a difference by just following orders.<\/p>\n
The 15 percent rule was instituted after an employee at the then-struggling company went a bit rogue at work and invented the world\u2019s first masking tape back in 1925. Post-It notes hit the market in 1980. The company now employs 7,350 researchers and has sales of $27 billion a year.<\/p>\n
Challenges<\/strong> <\/p>\n The Keltech way<\/strong> \u2022 This process was developed using a very similar model we use for NPI in our engineering department and taking a model developed by Cooper. Looking ahead<\/strong> SME\u2019s need to find time to be innovative, contract manufacturers are no different, most fabricators can manufacture an acoustic enclosure but have they offered their customer an improved product that saves them time and money, not so many I guess Enjoyed reading this post or want to find out more contact me on Declan.Walsh@keltech.ie<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Companies allocating time for their best and brightest to innovate is not a new school of thought. Many, technology based and otherwise, have realised that the return on investment of allowing employees to work autonomously on projects of their own choosing is substantial. This is not the case in the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nOne challenge we face is coming up with a way to involve all of our teams, including support and marketing, in the R&D programme. Involving non-technical team members from time to time could allow the development team to get inspiration and ideas from a different angle.
\nOther challenges can be
\n\u2022 High costs and risks \u2013 There is excellent support from Enterprise Ireland but R&D can be expensive but we aim to fail cheap and fast on projects especially at early stages
\n\u2022 Long timescales – it can take 2 years to bring some projects over the line
\n\u2022 Finding the time in a busy contract manufacturing environment to put the time in to move project forward
\n\u2022 Difficulties in anticipating how conditions will change in the market and whether customer needs will change during the long R&D process. Competitors may come up with a rival product that is just as effective.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/keltech.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/DW3.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 We use a stage and gate system to avoid ad-hoc or chaotic processes<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/keltech.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/DW2.png\")
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\n\u2022 The key to this is developing effective gates and having a simple scoring metric to either bin or move forward the new process\/Product
\n\u2022 Always have the customer in a continuous loop in the process so you know that the solution is customer centric whilst also keeping a close eye on your competitors
\n\u2022 Using FMEA tools we challenge all the projects risk management<\/p>\n
\nThe evidence is clear that we\u2019re off to a good start, we have only being working I this way for less than 12 months but the number of ideas we have brought forward are fantastic to see and by applying the process we have avoided things like \u201cpet projects\u201d being pushed along for the wrong reasons. Yes we face challenges but<\/p>\n
\nWe are curious to learn more about what other companies are doing to foster innovation. Does your company have an R&D program? How is it structured \u2013 as a percentage of time, designated days, another format? How else are employees encouraged to innovate?<\/p>\n