Example reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge:

I work as a design engineer. The company I am working for develops, designs and manufactures  production machines for customers who then use them to manufacture consumer electronic products.  Due to the nature of the challenging, fast developing and highly competitive market I henceforth cannot  explain the details but must keep my explanations vague to not disclose any intellectual property.

In our production machines big, thin panes of certain materials are been coated with thin layers of  different kind. The panes must be fixed to a frame like carrier, which then transports the panes through  the coating machines. Usually, the panes are fixed with clamps. Although we have long experience with  this technique, there are disadvantages and drawbacks. We were looking for new clamping possibilities  and came across a completely new technology, which showed potential to be usable for our application.

Our hypotheses was/is, that this new technology shall overcome some of the main disadvantages of the  existing clamping mechanisms almost all our customers suffer from. Please be reminded that I cannot be  more specific here.

Selection & Application:

This completely new means of clamping the material panes into our frame carrier is unprecedented. The  technology itself is to be developed from the scratch. The entity providing this technology offers it for  applications and markets completely different from ours. We have several special requirements differing  from the existing applications. The further development bears high risks.

To get a better understanding of this completely new approach, we set up a quick “life” test of this new  technology – a Learning Launch: We had the offering entity manufacture clamping parts from existing  material and properties and tested them in an environment those clamps could work. We knew, this  would not meet our final requirements. But at least we learned, whether this technology could work  generally, since this test set up would already encompass about 70% of our final requirements. The  outcome gave us some confidence needed to decide to follow up with this development. This  confidence was supported by the fact, that people from many different departments joined that life  test, members from marketing, sales, process development, design, procurement, assembly, to name a  few. Unfortunately, we cannot yet involve real customers, since we do not want to disclose this new  approach prematurely: Through our customers also our competitors would get word of this completely  new approach.

If this approach failed in the end for our intended application, it still has much potential to be used for  any upcoming future special applications like Corning’s Gorilla Glass which was developed much earlier  and then got a “re-launch” after Apple was suddenly using it in their cell phones.

Insight:

With our quick set-up “life” test we could prove the general functioning of his completely new and  unique technology for our application. A small team of people from diverse departments and  background were either personally present during the tests or were shown videos and pictures. In a  detailed test plan which was created upfront the tests we defined the execution of the test and fixed  test and success criteria to ascertain unbiased test evaluation of the tests.

With this early and simple test upfront, we could ascertain ourselves that a further follow up of this new  technology is promising. If this test had failed, we had saved the company many resources, time and  money we had otherwise spent in vain.

Approach:

As explained earlier in section “Selection & Application”, the Learning Launch test was executed with  clamps not (yet) suitable for our final environment. Some very specific environmental peculiarities were  not included into or applied during this early test. The raw material used for the new clamping system  must be further developed to meet those special requirements. This needs funding and time. We could  have at first executed and finalized the material development and then performed the “real”  environment testing. But this has high potential, that the development fails in the end -  and we had  never learned, at which special requirement this new approach failed. In future our general  requirements might change at some points, and suddenly the tested technology might have been  suitable for this other set of requirements.

We shall proceed with this new technology by developing the material to meet each single requirement  one at a time and have subsequent test set ups until all requirements are met. That way we understand  the specific nature of this new technology and learn and know most of its capabilities to adapt them for  new upcoming market requirements.

2018-08-13

