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2012-01-17: Press Release: Trends 2012 — Innovation, Collaboration, PerformanceTrends 2012 — Innovation, Collaboration, Performance
Stuttgart, GERMANY, 2012-01-19 – What topics, technologies and trends matter in 2012? Where is engineering of innovative products and solutions heading? Vector Consulting Services has spoken with clients in different industries to identify what will matter in engineering and technology in 2012. Our study is freely available as of now.
In 2012 business will further grow across all industries. But the clouds on the horizon are visible, and too many self-appointed prophets will reinforce a negative trend. Therefore needs for more efficiency and competitiveness in product development are obvious. We have spoken to our clients in various industries. The result: Companies invest in growth through innovation by developing new products and solutions. At the same time they are aware of the volatile market situation and thus challenge their development teams worldwide to be as lean and efficient as possible.
Companies and entire industries are changing very fast at this time. Software and IT are the main drivers of innovation. Companies that stagnate in this period of change and growth will fail. To operate fast, effective and yet flexible in 2012 is therefore the clear priority. However, executives are unsure whether the measures taken are sufficiently sustainable, and how the rising pressure for innovation can be managed. They expect concrete proposals, to both reduce development and product cost and to set the right priorities for new development.
Vector Consulting Services has identified five trends and enriched them with recommendations from our consulting practice:
1. Successfully innovate
Stimulate customers, suppliers and employees with creativity methods to elaborate the few but important requirements that make your product successful. Use benchmarks and learn from the methods used by other companies. Implement systematic innovation processes with clear yet short idea funnels, quick decision-making and fast solution development.
2. Use model-based development
First ensure consistency of features and products with a strong systems engineering. Support the interfaces to the various components and processes through traceability, automatic consistency checks and test automation. Introduce model-based development intelligently: Step By Step introduction, focus on critical components, continuity of requirements to code and test cases, and improving your own processes in parallel. Measure the implementation, and ask in each project ten to twenty percentage points improvement, at the spots where you want to put accents in 2012, for example 20% less cost variations, or 10% less cost in the test.
3. Improve performance
Set specific improvement targets on a quarterly basis. Train your employees in "lean development". Ask the individual teams to set up their own action plan to reduce waste, rework and interface conflicts – aligned of course with your corporate efficiency targets. Measure performance with metrics such as revenue per developer, reuse degree, and error rate after the integration. Make sure that agile techniques do not end up with arbitrary processes and an “anything goes” culture.
4. Foster tool-supported collaboration
Check your projects and collaboration processes: Where are the friction points, what discourages teams, which work products receive too much rework? Streamline workflows and related tools stepwise, with an overarching strategy, incremental improvement goals and a future-proof architecture. Note that efficient and effective tools solutions demand well-trained engineers and capable processes. Use professional change management, as it is not your own core competence.
5. Consistently address quality
Specify testable quality requirements and the associated measures for their implementation and validation with an end-to-end systems perspective, before specifying individual functions. Be careful when introducing agile methods that they do not endanger your achieved quality culture. Ensure a high level of discipline in the implementation by making the project progress more transparent. Reduce the overheads of overlapping validation steps.
The complete study can be accessed with the following URL: www.vector.com/trends-en
Date: 01/2012
Number of words: 602
Number of characters: 4.168
Vector Consulting Services GmbH
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70499 Stuttgart
Germany
www.vector.com/consulting
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You can access this and all previous press releases at: www.vector.com/consulting-news
About Vector Consulting Services (Basis 01.01.2012): Vector Consulting Services is a subsidiary of the globally active Vector Group. Our customers are from automotive, transport, information and communication, systems engineering and industrial automation. Vector Consulting Services provides consulting for technical product development throughout the product life cycle and supporting processes and tools.