J.M. Huber Corp is a diversified, multinational supplier of engineered materials, natural resources, and technology-based services to customers spanning industries from food products and pharmaceuticals, paper and energy to plastics and construction. As one of the largest family-owned companies in America, Huber is present in more than 20 countries. Its global research and development (R & D) organization is tasked with developing new products that will drive growth and profitability.
The Business Challenge
As part of a corporate commitment to become more market driven and develop new applications for J.M. Huber Corp products and technologies, the company set a strategic goal of generating 25% of revenue from new products by 2005. Specifically, Huber Engineered Materials, part of J.M. Huber Corp, realized that to expand the business they needed to reduce investments in commodity products and focus on becoming a specialty provider. This strategic shift required that they get more out of their innovation process. It also included implementing a reliable method for prioritizing projects and aligning them with corporate strategies, as well as for measuring project performance.
Two initial attempts at introducing a formal product development process failed to address the specialty needs of a provider of controlled process materials and specialty ingredients. The process was burdened with paperwork and proved too bureaucratic. The product investments it drove were largely incremental improvements. Because the process was paper-based, it was difficult to share information globally, which impeded project communication and slowed progress. Led by its Consumer Products technology manager, Mark Wozniak, and Minas Apelian, director, new product development, Huber turned to Sopheon's Accolade technology to enable improved management of their product pipeline and increase the efficiency of their product development activities.
The Solution
Huber launched an initiative called Market-Driven Innovation (MDI) to drive their new product development (NPD) strategy. It included the introduction of a structured product development process that would enable Huber to optimize new product investments and resources. Accolade automated the new NPD process, integrating best practices and providing an easy-to-use interface for team members, process leaders, and executives.
"Accolade provides consistency of information and format, and clarity of communication and expectations," according to Apelian. "There was a lack of process before, which permitted 'loose practices' and resulted in project delays and bad decisions. Accolade drives discipline without additional bureaucracy. It supports diligence in the use of process."
Huber introduced the NPD process and Accolade in parallel, coupled with a training program, to support its NPD teams under the new process. Accolade reinforced the process training by centralizing the process components, activity templates, and process documentation on the desktop. Accolade integrated process best practices so team members with questions can consult an online process manual and template instructions to understand expectations for project deliverables. As team members complete project work, the collection of key metrics is built into process documentation, dramatically reducing the time required to gather data and other details required for gate and portfolio reviews.
"We have reduced the amount of time team members spend reporting on project status because the information is now being collected in Accolade as a natural part of our process," stated Wozniak. "We are better able to understand the balance of our portfolio, because Accolade makes it easy for us to compare projects in our pipeline."
Accolade also supports collaboration across time zones and locations, tracking the latest project documentation and collecting updates as a natural part of Huber's process workflow so team members and project leaders can quickly come up to speed.
"With Accolade, project managers now get a real-time, integrated view of their projects under development, saving them time and the company money. Also, Accolade provides a searchable database so overlapping effort, like running two similar market research studies, can be avoided," said Christina Walkosak, a new product development process leader.
The Result
Huber is better equipped to assess the value and balance of their portfolio. Huber's new-product pipeline now consists of higher value projects that target unmet customer needs and new-to-the-world product innovations. Accolade enables the capture and reporting of NPD metrics to evaluate commercial and technical risk, and determine the net present value (NPV) of portfolio assets. In fact, the NPD initiatives implemented by Huber have led to an increase in the NPV of its product portfolio by four times over the past 12 months.
In one illustration of Accolade's value, Wozniak commented that previously, product development would nearly come to a halt when the quarterly portfolio review approached. Project leaders and team members would scramble to collate and tabulate project details to produce reports to support executive decision-making. Most often the project data was inconsistent and disorganized. According to Apelian and Wozniak, "Accolade has reduced the time spent preparing for portfolio management meetings by more than four man-months per year. We have also been able to eliminate approximately one man-month per year, per team member, in completing deliverables and project documentation."
Accolade is also helping Huber:
- Retain and leverage project research and key learnings;
- Deploy best practices and standards more effectively; and
- Reinforce process adherence.
Huber is also able to do more with its existing resources because it has simplified its workflow and improved its NPD process. Huber's NPD success is proof positive that its commitment to process improvement is paying off since very few projects that make it to commercial launch fail.
"Based on the impact of deploying Accolade and related strategic initiatives, we have increased our percentage of 'truly innovative' product development projects by 40%," Wozniak concludes.
