Reflection-Learning Launch

New Chemical System Launch owing to Changes in Government Regulation

Date : 15.04.2020

Challenge

I work for a German Multinational in India as an R&D Scientist. The organization manufactures raw  materials which can then be processed by our clients into high-performance plastics. Recently, due to  the changes in government regulations, we had to stop manufacturing the conventional systems and  switch to a more environment friendly system.

Additionally, an energy performance regulation was also passed which meant that the new system had  to be more efficient in terms of performance. So in nutshell, we had to come up with a product which  was not only greener but also more efficient.

The scope of project included the R&D, Sales, Marketing, Production and Procurement teams. The  timeline is approx. 2 months to ensure readiness before the start of peak season.

Selection

The tool that we used was Learning Launch. We had a fair idea on the kind of challenge and also a  reasonable alignment amongst the various departments. Moreover, since the product is a critical one,  prototyping and it subsequent testing is of utmost importance. This will help us retain our customers’  faith.

Application

Firstly, we had joint meeting with different teams to understand their perspective, challenges and  strengths. We then compiled the above inputs to get a holistic picture of what is possible and what is  not! This not only helped in establishing alignment among the various departments but also saved time  as the product development could now take place after the feedback from various departments rather  than incorporating it after reaching a stage in product development.

The R&D team conducted many experiments to come up with a few close solutions. These solutions  were then tested at our scale-up simulation lab. The data generated was slightly different from our  expectation and as a result, after continuous iterations, we were able to get some solutions.

Finally, we clustered our customers on the probability of success and commercialization. There was  another meeting with the teams to have alignment on our readiness before learning launch process. The  system was finally run in Pilot operations at few of our customers.

Insights

The assumptions in the form of our trial product were finally tested at customers across different  Geographies. Although, there were few variations against our expected results. The product more or  less fit into the expectations of our customers. This is because of application of smaller learning launch  process at our lab even before a major learning launch at customer’s end. This had greatly helped us in  testing our assumptions, learning about the possible flaws and then working on rectifying it. The process  in nutshell broadened our perspective on the launch process.

The few fine-tunings are being incorporated in the system and we have even got commercial orders  from few of our customers.

Approach

Although, we had applied the Learning Launch earlier as well, it was not as structured and mostly on an  ad hoc basis due to which there have always been a few glitches in the process/system. Another,  learning would be to involve all the stakeholders which we earlier missed out somehow. This helps in  bringing the essential elements of diversity on the table and also aligning the various teams.

