Challenge

My challenge was an Engineering project to design a new manufacturing facility and line which was  to be used to manufacture products in the Life Science industry. The design had to incorporate  capability for both the manufacture of highly regulated products as well as R&D and launch of new  product lines.  The challenge was to design a new building and line that met the requirements of  multiple stakeholder’s including:

•  The operations team that will use the line for manufacturing products with a high degree of  process control with a line and

•  The R&D team who want to have flexibility to experiment when developing new products on  the line.

•  The Quality team who are responsible for ensuring that commercial products are  manufactured to required specification and quality standards using a validated  manufacturing process on qualified equipment.

•  The Sales & Marketing team who need both security of supply of commercial products for  customers as well as a pipeline of new products to generate new revenue streams.  This  team also want a “state-of-the art” facility that they can showcase to customers during site  visits.

With so many stakeholders involved, there were many differing needs and opinions that needed to  be considered in the design of the line and facility.  An additional challenge was that these needs had  to be incorporated within challenging Project budget and timeline constraints.

Selection

I used the mind mapping tool to understand and to help visualize the needs of multiple stakeholders  so that these needs could be incorporated into the final design.  I felt that given the complexity of  the challenge and the number of stakeholders involved, that the mind mapping visual tool was the  best way of getting all the needs down on paper in a structured manner, and getting all the  stakeholders on the same page.

Application

I first started with my own mind map to help clarify in my own mind who the key stakeholders were  and what their focus areas/responsibilities/touchpoints were in the design and use of the new  facility and manufacturing line.

I then individually met with some representatives from each of the stakeholder groups to interview  them and to listen to their ideas on what the new manufacturing line needed to do, how they  interacted with it, what their needs were, what their expectations were with respect to the design,  fit and finish of the new manufacturing line and facility.  I tried to ask “open” questions such as:

“How will you use interact with this new facility and line?”

“Describe how this facility should look?”

“What ideas do you have to improve your experience of using this new manufacturing facility?”

“If you had a magic wand, what’s the one thing you would do with this new manufacturing facility?”

I documented these ideas on sticky notes.

Based on this information, I assembled the ideas as well as photos of similar facilities and  manufacturing lines to help get some feedback form stakeholders on what was required. I invited all  the stakeholders to a workshop.  In advance of the workshop I prepared the room with feedback and  the photos on the walls.  During the workshop, I invited them to review the feedback from all the  stakeholders.  We then jointly created a poster capturing the key needs and themes that needed to  be incorporated into the facility and manufacturing line design.

Insight

What I learned from this approach is that although it seemed at the beginning of the process, that it  was going to be very challenging to meet everyone’s needs, the use of a visual tool such as mind  mapping made this process much easier.  Also by having all the stakeholders work together as a  team to build the mind map, it gave everyone a better understanding of the different needs of each  of the stakeholder groups and gave everyone involved a real sense of ownership of the final design.   In addition, it was interesting that potential areas of conflicting needs were discussed and in some  cases, it was possible to come to compromise agreements based on a shared understanding.  Even  more interesting was that in some cases the solutions that the group came up with were very  different and substantially better than the initial solutions suggested by individual stakeholders.

Approach

Typically, I have used brainstorming previously in similar situations to capture ideas.  However, in  this case I felt that use of the more visual mind mapping approach helped to better align multiple  stakeholders with differing needs and views.  The mind mapping approach also helped the group to  come up with more creative (and sometimes surprising) ideas and potential solutions.

One other Design Thinking concept that resonated with me and that I think I could use more in the  future was the idea of “failing fast and failing cheap”.  In my organization we often spend a lot of  time going back and forth discussing the best design and not coming up with a clear decision, when a  quick sketch/experiment might help speed things up.  For example, when discussing fit and finish of  a facility during the mind mapping exercise it would have been possible to “mock up” models or

small sections of wall, ceiling, line material of construction materials etc to help end users decide on  which material/finish they prefer.  Also, when deciding what level of equipment control was  required for a process, it is possible to run a quick experiment on a pilot scale.

