Overview

Have you ever presented months of hard work to management believing they would be pleased with the results, only to have them say, “This isn’t what we wanted!” Have you ever worked on a project that went in circles because each of the team members had different objectives? Have you ever spent precious time on the boss’ pet project, which everyone knew was destined to failure, but no one had the courage to cancel?

The above situations are all too common and arise from fundamental underlying problems – poor project selection and definition as well as lack of alignment among the key stakeholders.

With the current economic environment, companies cannot afford to waste time on the wrong projects – working on the right projects is essential for survival. Setting up a robust portfolio management process is a necessary and excellent first step; however, it is not sufficient. Even after a “winning” new product idea has been selected from the portfolio, it is often not well fleshed-out, and the chance for one of the above scenarios to occur is still high.

 How can you ensure your teams are not only working on the right projects, but maximizing those ideas? Some companies have tried applying methodologies like Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Lean. Perhaps you’ve considered these approaches or even tried them, but find them burdensome or difficult to implement.

This interactive session will show you how to reap many of the same benefits of DFSS by applying a handful of carefully selected, proven and easy-to-use tools, allowing you to maximize good new product ideas and kill bad ones, while keeping your team motivated and focused.

 Specifically you will learn:

• How to focus your team on the customer
• How to align your sponsors, project team and key stakeholders on the right new product development project, ensuring that:
  • The project is on strategy
  • Success criteria are clear and measurable
  • Product is customer-preferred
  • Project is profitable
• How Boost ™, a proprietary method developed by Tai (based on her extensive experience at J&J and elsewhere), can help simplify project selection and completion
• Examples of two real-life implementations
• How process and tools were applied
• Successful outcomes

Who Should Attend:

New Product Development project leaders and cross-functional team members (including project management, marketing, sales, R&D, finance, engineering, and operations) as well as project sponsors.

Invite others to join you - the fee is the same as long as you are on one line, just put it on speakerphone!

Takeaways:

By participating in this session, you will have the opportunity to learn and ask questions about these tools and how you can build them into your own organization's program. The session will be a 60-minute presentation with 30 minutes interactive Q&A. Follow-on email Q&A with the instructor is also offered.

 Includes:

1. Access to slides used during the session via webinar technology
2. Your questions answered directly by an expert
3. Access to synchronized Windows Media file of slides and audio after the session

Session Leaders

Helen Tai
Founder
Enabling Innovation

Helen Tai founded Enabling Innovation out of a passion for helping people and organizations succeed. During her corporate career, Helen worked as a global internal consultant overseeing the transformation of several organizations and empowering teams to solve complex business problems. Inspired by the positive impact to people and businesses, Helen began consulting in order to broaden her reach.

Helen began her professional career as a biostatistician with Ortho Pharmaceuticals, G.D. Searle, and Lorex Pharmaceuticals. At Information Resources she was associate director of statistical projections and sampling. Later, Helen held senior positions in Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Products Division. Among her responsibilities were managing all consumer research in China; consulting on statistics to J&J consumer companies across Asia-Pacific; leading complex, global, cross-functional process improvement initiatives; and coaching senior management in developing organizational visions as well as the strategy and tactics to bring those visions to fruition.

While at J&J, Helen trained over 250 people in process improvement and certified over 50 green and black belts in North America, Asia, and Europe. She mentored a broad range of projects including many business processes, new product development, website design, sales & logistics, intellectual property, and diversity & inclusion.

Helen is a Certified Design for Six Sigma Master Black Belt, a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, and holds an Executive Lean Certification. She served on J&J’s cross-company Design Excellence team and on the Lean subject matter team; she also founded the Lean in new product development team. She worked as an examiner for Lean maturity assessments and Process Excellence assessments (the latter is analogous to the Malcolm Baldrige national quality program). Along the way she served as a core member of the North American consumer diversity council, and she won two J&J Standards of Leadership awards for driving Process Excellence.

Helen has a wide range of consulting competencies including strategy development & implementation, project leadership, change management, and coaching. Additionally, she is an experienced trainer in Design for Six Sigma, Six Sigma, Lean, and basic and advanced statistics.

Helen earned a bachelors degree in statistics from the University of Michigan, and a masters degree in statistics from Penn State University.
 

What you will learn

• How to focus your team on the customer
• How to align your sponsors, project team and key stakeholders on the right new product development project, ensuring that:
  • The project is on strategy
  • Success criteria are clear and measurable
  • Product is customer-preferred
  • Project is profitable
• How Boost ™, a proprietary method developed by Tai (based on her extensive experience at J&J and elsewhere), can help simplify project selection and completion
• Examples of two real-life implementations
• How process and tools were applied
• Successful outcomes