Listen to the voice of the customer

Sponsor of this year's Product Design and Development Awards, Scientific Generics talks to Dean Palmer about the essential ingredients for a successful new product development project When it comes to working with customers on design and development projects and helping them to exploit emerging technologies, Simon Davey, chief executive at Scientific Generics has a very clear underlying message: "You have to understand, create and then deliver." These three objectives form the basis of how Scientific Generics works. Davey continued: "The understanding element is about understanding the 'soft' issues of the customer. Historically, companies and manufacturers have not been very good at actually listening to the voice of the customer or user of the product. Nowadays, there are tools and techniques that allow you to do this." Ethnographic research is one area in which Scientific Generics excels. "This is the study of people in their own environment. For example, watching a video of how customers in a supermarket actually buy their light bulbs can be a real eye-opener," Davey laughed. But the point he made is a very serious one. In a recent ethnographic study for a customer in the medical industry, Scientific Generics carried out full video surveillance of clinical activity across 37 hospital sites. Davey explained: "We taped all the surgical procedures for a period of 24 hours all these sites, which were based in the US and the UK. This allowed us to compare and cross-reference common issues between sites and look at the needs of surgeons between different sites. 34 major needs were identified and this resulted in six new product innovations that would satisfy these requirements." Create, the second part of Davey's slogan, refers to innovation. He explained: "We are organised to innovate. There are five factors you must optimise in order to create this kind of environment. "First, your people have to be innovative. You must have a reward system to motivate these individuals. How you set up roles and responsibilities for these people is also key. The system has to enable innovation, for example, your IT systems, networks and infrastructure. Finally, the design and development process is important." Davey then explained the third element: "Deliver is about delivering to your customer. One of the things that's happened recently is a major trend for manufacturers to outsource huge parts of their product development process. This means that when we take on projects for these clients we are increasingly becoming responsible for delivering the product right through to the manufacturing stage, from concept design, working prototypes, design-for-manufacture, CAD, simulation, CFD, right through to testing and first-off production units. Some of our customers are now saying to us: 'We want you to take over responsibility for this complete product line'. "This means as a company we have to develop and maintain longer term relationships with clients, not simply undertaking one-off projects, but we have to be consistent, reliable and able to respond quickly to their needs. Scientific Generics, part of the Generics Group, was founded more than 15 years ago and has rapidly grown from a small start up company into a major technology design and development organisation with more than 230 employees at its headquarters in Cambridge. The company has gained a reputation for successful commercialisation of emerging technologies. The company's client list includes the likes of AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens, Proctor & Gamble, Vodafone, Tesco, British Aerospace, BOC Edwards, Aqualisa Showers and Nike. Francotyp-Postalia, a manufacturer of franking machines, recently asked Scientific Generics to help it develop a low cost, compact design of franking machine for the rapidly-growing home office market. Generics first launched a 'Customer Insight' programme in order to establish a clear picture of customer needs before full product development began. This structured approach to product design identified essential features and gauged customer reaction to establish the ideal parameters within which to progress design work. Davey explained: "Ease of use was identified by customers as the main priority. By role-playing in a model home office enabled us to fully test a number of product concepts and software simulation of the user interface also enabled us to further research into user perceptions. As a result of this, an integrated weigh scale became part of the finished design. And this work with customers also resulted in the envelope slot being designed as a vertical rather than a horizontal slot, which helped users locate the envelope right-first-time and reduced printing costs." Industrial design was also key and had to maintain a low cost, compact format. An all-plastic construction was devised with core printing functions based on established ink-jet cartridge technologies: an ARM-based microprocessor supported the processor-intensive print operation at low cost. An economic modem allowed the unit to be re-charged via the telephone and a built-in power supply reduced costs even further. According to Davey, Scientific Generics was also responsible for delivering the first 1,000 production units from its manufacturing partner's factory in Malaysia. "We helped to establish a low cost manufacturing base in the Far East, comprising mould tool manufacturers, injection moulders and final assembly. We had to ensure we designed for ease of assembly and manufacture, so our Hong Kong office had to work very closely with the suppliers in Singapore and Malaysia." Innovative software techniques reduced development and debugging timescales and allowed PC-based testing of more than 80% of the software. Generics and Francotyp teams worked in parallel, testing and exchanging software models via defined software interfaces, further reducing development time. The company is also working closely with industrial customers. Vickers Aerospace, for example, was bidding in a competitive tender to Airbus for the contract to supply power drive units used to move freight pallets around in the cargo bay. The company's initial tender was 30% higher than those of its two competitors. Scientific Generics was brought in to analyse the Airbus specification and the responses of Vickers' competitors and identified areas in which Vicker's proposed solution exceeded the requirements, as well as areas where the competitive tenders were deficient. Generics then performed a design for assembly analysis which led to a new design of power drive unit that consisted of one third fewer parts and took half the time to assemble. The electronics and sensors were also rationalised and the gearbox was re-designed. Total cost savings were more than 30%. Another project, this time with toy manufacturer Hornby, resulted in Generics picking up the 'Best New Toy Design' at this year's Marketing Awards for Excellence in Toys. After 18 months working together with Hornby, Scientific Generics developed a revolutionary product, Sport Digital. This works by combining sensitive, digitally-controlled power with optical sensors, enabling up to six microchip-controlled cars to race on a single Scalextric lane, each car able to perform overtaking manoeuvres on specialised bends in the track by simply touching a button.