Case Study No 2

A case study is defined as “a process or record of research in which detailed consideration is given to the development of a particular person, group, or situation over a period of time.”

Case Studies are interesting and useful because they describe real situations and projects that we can all use to learn together from. That is the reason Harvard Business School consistently uses this approach to extract/document learnings and improve performance.

This week’s case study will describe a project where a chronic customer problem was solved by inventing and commercializing (at scale) a new and improved material.

Situation

My client’s customer (a Big 3 automotive company) was mad at them again, unfortunately. The parts my client was making, a composite material, were again causing problem in the end use application, which in this case was an automotive application. Big-3 automotive companies are not known for their understanding in such situations, so my client was in an unenviable spot!

The fundamental problem was an excessive softening of the composite upon exposure to water and soap. These conditions were expected in the application and were not unusual. The problem was very obvious to the owner of the car and irreversible without a lengthy repair at the car dealer.

Intervention

Some solutions existed that were not durable, but marginal “band aids” that would not be robust. These were possible approaches (as a last resort) but they had big manufacturing issues. We wanted a much better and more robust solution that eliminated the manufacturing issues.

We decided to create a brand new composite material to permanently and reliably fix the problem. This was very audacious, and there were many doubters in the “peanut gallery”. The non-contributing doubters were ignored, when possible.

A small team was assembled, I led the team. We had both chemistry and engineering experts on the team, so we could understand the fundamentals and then apply the fundamentals.

Expertise from outside the company was used for one of the key building blocks. Many compositions were tested so a variety of options could be examined for customer performance/satisfaction and manufacturability. Existing manufacturing assets were used to keep costs down. Many lab trials were conducted, and math modeling and process simulation helped steepen the learning curve and reduce the development time. Manufacturability was looked at ruthlessly, early and often. The process and material were perfected and refined in plant trials using the full scale equipment. Rough patches in the project happened, as expected: these were dealt with by persevering and keeping focused on the ultimate benefits to the users of the new material.

Result

The project was a tremendous success. The new material was very manufacturable and additional shifts were added to the production schedule to satisfy customer demand. The new material permanently solved the problem being experienced by the client’s customer. The ability to produce the new material was protected by a patent (because the material could easily be reverse-engineered by competitors). Sales of products incorporating this new material were (many) tens of millions of dollars.

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My main learning from this case study is the power of being bold when solving chronic customer problems. The path of inventing new solutions or materials is not easy, but it offers huge rewards and enduring competitive advantage. A relentless focus on manufacturability is absolutely imperative to ensure the real manufacturing difficulties are recognized early and eliminated as quickly as possible.

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YOUR CHALLENGE THIS WEEK

Please think about the boldest process and materials innovation efforts in your organization over the past 5-10 years…

• What can be learned from your own organization’s experiences? Can these learnings be documented and shared using the above case study format?

• Would a “PRE-Mortem” on a current project be useful? Have you developed this skill in your organization? This methodology will help examine and surface possible problems while there is still time to act on them, rather than after the fact.

I’d really like to hear your thoughts about this case study or your own organizations case studies. Please give us a call to see how we can help you build robust and trustworthy manufacturing processes.

If you email me I’ll get back to you promptly, thanks.

All the Best,

Marty

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