Innovation is being talked about for a long time in management literature, conferences and at various forums. This article attempts to discuss the concept of innovation in the context of manufacturing, and the concept of disruptive innovation; with a view to helping the readers implement practically structured innovation in their organizations.
The word innovation is widely used to mean starting from something existing and improving it to make it of better quality, lower cost. easier to make or maintain; or a combination of them. This can be an idea, a product, or a combination of them. This can be an idea, a product, or a process. Innovation may follow a systematic process or at times can come as an idea as a spark. An organization cannot rely on sparks to fly from time to time. It is, therefore, necessary to follow a systematic process and develop a structured approach, with serious commitment from the top management. sparks
Disruptive innovation(Clayton Christensen, HBR 1995), is an innovation that creates a new market or a value proposition and eventually disrupts existing products and services that is satisfying the needs of the market. The innovation of automotive, for instance, was a revolution, but when they were introduced in the late 19th century, they did not disrupt, as they were very expensive, and did not replace the horse carts quickly. When Ford introduced mass manufacturing through its manufacturing innovation, it caused a major disruption. Disruptive innovations, therefore, are, tend to hit the base of the market pyramid and provide a dramatically low-cost solution. Disruptive innovations, therefore, are characterized by low cost and high penetration, low margins as they target the base of the pyramid, and difficult to predict.
The advent of factory system about 200 years ago in England itself can be said to be a disruptive innovation, as it created an ecosystem and reached the masses to provide affordable products at large volumes, out of the home-based industry. The textile industry, therefore, can be said to be a pioneer in disruptive innovation. Other examples of disruptive innovation include steel mill, integrated circuits, computers, smartphones, the internet and so on.
The advent of factory system about 200 years ago in England itself can be said to be a disruptive innovation, as it created an ecosystem and reached the masses to provide affordable products at large volumes, out of the home-based industry. The textile industry, therefore, can be said to be a pioneer in disruptive innovation. Other examples of disruptive innovation include steel mill, integrated circuits, computers, smartphones, the internet and so on.
It is, therefore, obvious that disruptive innovations may not be a day to day affair. Business while trying to look for disruptions, need to look at continuous innovation, which may not be revolutionary, or disruptive. Therefore, the objective is to look for a competitive edge by way of better products, which have better value for money and better customer service.
Many manufacturing innovation efforts focus on technology in some way or another. The technology involved may be the manufacturing technology used by the business or information technology. Getting advanced technology, automation (the most common understanding of the word innovation), cycle time reduction are some of the common interpretations of the term and most innovation efforts in manufacturing are directed towards achieving these objectives.
Many innovation efforts, on the other hand, concentrate on developing new products or services, the need for which may be triggered by competitions or customers. Product innovation has its challenges. They often require investments, which may be visible cost. New products involve a risk in terms of performance of the product, accepted by the customers, manufacturing risk, and the warranty associated with the product. Also, there is a strong possibility, particularly in B2B space of someone learning from the innovation and then improvising on it, leaving the competitive advantage in a shorter time window.
Process related innovations, on the other hand, are perhaps more sustainable, as processes are not easy to learn.
More often than not, however, such product or process innovation efforts involve significant investment not only in equipment like machinery and tooling but also in retraining the employees to work with the changes. People's aspects often are ignored and are difficult to achieve even if efforts are taken in this direction too. We also find that often, reduction in operation cycle time (e.g. time taken to reduce the VC time taken to machine one part) does not increase throughput in the system.
This is to say that the overall output, dispatches, or sales hardly improves, and reduction in cycle time or similar efforts, which should "logically" improve output. It is also noted that such efforts often require significant knowledge of technology, hence is difficult to be carried out by people who are not export in such technology.
For a business of any size, process innovation can be a key to make rapid progress. Such process innovation can be low cost, implemented quickly and sustainable. Such innovation will need work practices to change that can be achieved by using methods by deploying lean methods, that involve a structured approach to involve people, train them suitably to solve day to day and long term problems and create a culture of innovation.
Innovation is a complex process. A business may follow the following process to be successful at innovation.
1. Develop a strategy for innovation with an assessment of the capability of the business to innovate - successful innovation will need the presence of competent people, in addition to the availability of reasonable resources. Most importantly, the top management must have an open and supportive approach to experimentation. The perspective must be to encourage exploration with the cognizance of the fact that some innovation may fail.At the same time, the innovation must have reasonable goals and various people may need to be aware of the responsibility.
2. Identify / define business problems - while innovation can be done in multiple areas, one may prioritize them based on urgent business needs and where quick success with innovation can be obtained.
3. Analysis of current state - Business must start with defining and redefining customer needs,any gaps in the needs and their current offering, current trends in our industry and related industry.
4. Develop an ideal portfolio - based on the business requirements and capabilities. various ideas may be generated.These ideas should be subsequently evaluated based on business needs, probability of success, resource requirements, and investment required.
5. Pilot and testing - these ideas should be tested on a small scale to prove their viability. Often one may not realize the downside of many suggestions. The pilot testing needs to be through and and one comes across many innovations that were deployed when the cost and reduction seemed attractive while ignoring some important and damaging side effects.
6. Commercializing the innovation - this step involves implementing the innovation in the area it was developed for and also deploy horizontally wherever possible.
7. Involve people and make it a part of the culture - the best results are obtained when all people are involved Innovation is not the responsibility of one person or one department, as innovation can and should come from anyone. People need to be trained in the right tools and the right direction and motivation need to be provided. Such efforts create a culture that becomes difficult to imitate. This, however, is not easy to achieve,though the results are worth the efforts. If the organization is large enough, appointing a Chief Innovation Officer to run these initiatives can be thought of.
8. Management reporting, review, and celebration - Periodic reporting to management is important. Through reviews, we get a lot of ideas of improvising. If the business is multi - divisional or multi location, we must create opportunities to share best practices and innovations implemented. The management may encourage them by awards, certificates, and celebration.Innovation is a tough task and motivations must be kept high at all times.
Innovations is a tool that can help even a small or a medium size companies without having the same amount of resources. This can be achieved by approaching the markets not served by large companies. Smaller companies can accelerate the speed of innovation by cutting bureaucracy and make quicker decisions. To get the best results, the business should create a conscious and structured approach to innovation, which gives one an imperative to survive.
Republished from an article from the magazine ITAMMA VOICE December - 2019 ( Permission given by Director General ( Technical), ITAMMA, www.itamma.org Mumbai - 1.
Blogger's experience:
1. Innovation in a Textile Mill is more complex than any other type of manufacturing, how do you innovate, how to change the looks that a customer eyes sees at the fabric that he looks when he sees the fabric you have made which is kept in the local textile shop.
2. Textile mills make fabrics in every color that you can think of but still, when you go to buy a fabric you may not get the exact color you wanted. So, you go to another big shop. What innovation is possible here?.
3. When a customer looks at several varieties of fabrics which are on the table, what does he do?. He takes his hand places his 4 fingers below the fabric and his thumb over the fabric and gently rubs the fingers. What happens?. What innovation can we think off?.
4. Now let's go inside a textile mill. What innovation can we think of in a textile mill running 24 * 7 producing fiber to fashion fabrics and apparels. It's mind blogging to think of innovation for every person working in the mills including the top management.
5. What is the worry of the top management on Innovation?.
As General Manager of the mills accountable for running the mills on net profit my mind was roaming from raw materials to processing of the yarn and from yarn to fabric and fabric to finishing and packing and logistics and finally to customer' demands on quality of similar product,quality complaints from customer, Quality Control in material process, Civil Engineering, Electronics / Automation.Further to maintain standards in mill operations to labor management.Labor Laws, Legal knowledge in disputes, Govt controls which were mandatory social obligations etc...
As a 'Qualified Chartered Textile Technologist' after several years of working in reputed private textile mills. I had gathered more practical knowledge than my theory in college and textile mills. I did further research practically by changing several textile mills in textile capitol of south and north India. This was a accumulated knowledge that was the force that mede me to go for changes and innovate in any such activity that improved the all-round performance of the mill. Therefore Innovation was part of my Job.
The various mills I worked as General Manager was mills controlled by Government of India managed undertaking known as National Textile Corporation which was running 111 textile mills all over India. It was most important to run the mills on Govt procedure and controls. Innovation, here was not my cup of tea. However when I tried it cost my Job.
