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Three Contents:
3-1
Strategic Road-mapping Aligns Goals and Guides R&D Investment at Boeing
Commercial Airplanes
3-2
Improving R&D Effectiveness at National Semiconductor
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Issue 1
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3-2
Strategic
Road-mapping Aligns Goals and Guides R&D Investment at Boeing Commercial
Airplanes
How do you combine corporate strategic
objectives, market influences, and product opportunities with the right
product/technology investments? This question is not a riddle; the
answer is strategic road-mapping -- and MVP Award winner
Duane Y. Oda is
one of its strongest advocates.
Oda, who is product development chief and leader of strategic
road-mapping & product development collaboration at Boeing Commercial
Airplanes, has championed the development and implementation of
strategic road-mapping and portfolio management processes at Boeing
Commercial Airplanes. He has also co-led a Boeing enterprise
road-mapping initiative with Raymond Cosner (Boeing Integrated Defense
Systems director of technology and leader of IDS road-mapping). These
efforts have resulted in a dramatic improvement in the effectiveness of
product development and R&D, while establishing meaningful metrics for
R&D based on the corporate revenue that is linked to the success of each
R&D product. Other metrics measure how well the R&D portfolio targets
the right strategic capability needs.
“In my role as the single aisle product development chief two years ago,
I saw a growing need to strengthen the alignment of product development
and technology development activities to Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ (BCA)
strategic objectives, market opportunities and customer value,” Oda
explains. Though there were other ways to approach this, Oda and his
team selected strategic road-mapping based on a best practice assessment
of how other leading companies in the world utilized this methodology.
Strategic road-mapping provides the view necessary for rational
long-term investments in product development and R&D as captured and
managed by product and technology development portfolios. “This
initiative has been a strong enabler in enhancing the development of the
BCA R&D plan as well as the alignment of strategies to our R&D plan,”
Oda maintains.
Product development, both organization and processes, plays a vital role
in BCA’s R&D process and the development of its R&D plan. “Our
multi-year R&D plan drives product development and technology
development activities as well as providing the basis for the allocation
of R&D funding,” Oda states. The “readiness” of the R&D activities are
measured through R&D gate reviews/criteria led by product development,
with cross-functional involvement by organizations such as
marketing/sales, product strategy, product development, technology
development, finance, engineering, manufacturing and competitive
analysis/intelligence, etc.
Oda credits the road-mapping activity with enabling better communication
of the company strategies. “The road-mapping process that we use has
been a great collaboration tool in that it allows our people to know
what the strategies are, and for the appropriate people to develop the
plans to address them.” He adds that now many of the roadmaps extend out
for 20 years, where previously they only extended out a few years. The
new roadmaps contain all of the potential products that they plan to
launch over that 20-year time frame.
In addition to utilizing road-mapping within Boeing, this approach is
being piloted in support of some of BCA’s external collaboration efforts
(i.e., with NASA, strategic partners, technical affiliates, and others.)
The strategic road-mapping process aligns BCA’s market requirements and
opportunities to future products and services, and identifies what
capabilities are required to make these products and services
successful. “This provides the ingredients for defining what the right
technology and product development activity will be required to achieve
these capabilities,” Oda explains. “When we create these roadmaps from
scratch, we invite representatives from various organizations and share
with them the end goal we’re trying to accomplish.” The cross-functional
approach helps to define and strengthen the links among marketing,
product development, technology development, finance and
others--essentially the value stream—to develop the right products at
the right time in the right marketplace. “We all now have a better
understanding of the role each of us plays in producing a successful
product in the world marketplace.”
According to Oda, the road-mapping process has enabled BCA to have a
better focus on the R&D activities to ensure that goals are met. “We now
have a chance of achieving our objectives in a fashion where they are
better focused in terms of R&D dollars, in resources and
expertise—that’s why we’re more effective.” |
