Although there has been a steady climb in market demand and penetration, the household kitchen towel sector has seen no genuine product innovation since its inception in 1931. Working closely with our client, Better All Round, we have challenged the norm. We developed, and are now supplying the market with, a revolutionary new kitchen towel product.

This product has been developed to make using kitchen towels easier by layering single round sheets through an innovative stacking system. As there are no perforations, you simply lift off a sheet with one hand. Each stack contains the equivalent of two traditional kitchen towel rolls held in a waterproof card base rather than on a roll. Everyone wins: space-saving design and round shape means 20% less packaging, over 30% fewer trucks on the road and less space required in the supermarket and in the home. And less waste for our planet.

Driving this development – from the business design and concept to finished product in store within 12 months – has been a real achievement. With no pre-existing equipment available, we developed a completely new manufacturing process.

A pharmaceutical start-up had a brilliant idea for making tablets, which involved adding the active ingredient of the drug to the bulk tablet as a surface coating rather than mixing it in at an earlier stage. Through this novel approach, they realised they could mass-produce bulk tablets at a central location, distribute them worldwide, and then have them customised locally. The potential benefits included cutting transit time to enabling a distributed supply strategy that would cut tax liabilities.

Our team were integral in creating the platform to make this ambition a reality. The concept drew on powder deposition using electrostatics – adapting principles used in photocopying – to enable the direct digital printing of the tablets. The new system enabled the efficient manufacture of ultra-low batch quantities, which provided improved flexibility, allowing the company to achieve rapid and controlled changeover between surface coverage and dosage level. We then created a full pilot line to assess performance of the concept through to clinical trials.

This novel approach completely challenged traditional means of tablet manufacture and opened up bold new opportunities for delivering value from local finishing at country or regional level.

As customers increasingly expect products to meet their individual needs, personalisation presents a rapidly growing opportunity for consumer goods companies worldwide. Meeting consumers’ demands will require nothing less than the reinvention of manufacturing. We are making personalisation possible – and affordable – by helping companies turn new technology into commercially viable, practical solutions. We are using additive manufacturing (also known as high speed 3D printing) to give consumer goods companies new opportunities to tailor the product offerings for individual consumers or customers.

For a major consumer products company, we developed new technology to enable them to produce personalised products on a larger scale and at speeds approaching existing production lines. We are going beyond what is achievable using current manufacturing technologies by bringing full digital capability into play, allowing for the personalisation of physical appearance, internal structure, texture, content and functionality of mass produced goods. Our technical digital manufacturing solution is underpinned by the development of smarter logistics and sourcing arrangements.

A leading drinks manufacturer asked us to help them raise their game to meet changing consumer demand. This meant responding more flexibly to shifts in the market and making the most of opportunities for revenue growth. The answer lay in developing a smarter, more responsive supply chain that combined flexible manufacturing processes, demand-driven principles and new approaches to delivery.

Our team designed a new end-to-end supply chain to make this happen. We looked at each element of the supply chain design and created a detailed strategy and approach to put our recommendations in place. In parallel, we defined a new-to-the-world manufacturing solution that enabled the ambitious supply chain model to be realised while delivering a new-to-the-industry cost structure.

The result? The company could more than halve their inventory days of supply, from 50 to 20 days. And they are moving to a highly responsive supply chain that can make to order, satisfying changing consumer and customer demands.

After getting new insight into consumer preferences, a large global consumer healthcare company realised they needed to increase the variety of individual items for one of their biggest selling products. As their existing factories focused on large-scale batch manufacture, this type of customisation was impossible without significant extra costs.

Our team assessed the technical and market demands and created a new concept to enable customisation. The solution was to make the base materials in bulk using existing capital and to customise the product just before packing through an inline mixing and dosing system that added a variety of ingredients (such as flavours and colours). We then developed a proof of concept, prototype and high-volume pilot-line process.

The final model – completed in just 18 months – enabled production of bulk and then customisation to meet market demand in real time. It helped the business introduce new products while reducing business risks and their minimum batch size at no extra cost. Our solution provided a platform for replication across several sites to create a global supply network able to customise products cost-effectively and meet the current and future demands of customers.

A new bold-flavoured snack range had been launched onto the market and was proving incredibly successful with the public. The manufacturers found themselves in a position where they urgently needed to ramp up production to meet growing demand. They were considering building a new manufacturing capability but this was capital-intensive and imposed significant time constraints. Without an alternative approach, they faced having to pull advertising for the product.

To find a solution, our team assessed the company’s processing and packaging equipment and provided a view of system architectural options. We assessed key parameters influencing production speed and product quality and how these could be monitored, controlled and optimised. We then looked for innovative production solutions that would deliver against short-term needs while providing a platform for efficient future capital expansion.

The short-term solution reduced process cycle times by 60%, enabling the company to meet market demands and avoiding the need to replicate lines and factory locations whilst reducing energy costs and providing more consistent quality. For the long-term, we helped the company rethink their supply chain strategy and get management buy-in for the next generation (and more cost-effective) process lines.

One of the largest food companies in the world had launched an ice cream product that was proving extremely successful with consumers. As a result of this success, the company found their manufacturing line being stretched like never before. They needed to produce the volumes required to satisfy demand while getting more value from their manufacturing equipment. Our team of experts in materials-handling and packaging helped them achieve this goal.

Our team started by mapping the product’s entire ‘journey’ from raw ingredient to point of sale. On the back of this, we brainstormed 100 new ideas for how the product could theoretically be manufactured for less cost, developing 18 of these ideas into workable concepts. After sharing these concepts with the in-house team, we narrowed them down to four proposals with the greatest potential. For each of these, we developed processes and packaging to show how they could be realised, supported by a watertight business case.

By looking at how their product could be manufactured, we gave the company an approach that was unconstrained by conventional thinking. Our proposal has the potential to save them tens of millions of dollars by reducing cost of goods by over 15%.

In most industries, there are always problems piling up. If your work is related to the shop floor, logistics, or the customer, then the shop floor will provide you with a never-ending stream of issues to be addressed. If you’re somewhat more distant from the shop floor, it is usually your manager or your customer providing a stream of tasks. In western management especially, it is common to simply hand down most problems to someone lower in the hierarchy and let that person sort out what’s important and what’s not. (However, in defense of top management, there are always enough problems left for top management).

In short : you have more work to do than you can do in the available time you have.

Facing a large number of tasks, the worst thing you can do is to start them all! Yes, you may be able to start (almost) all the tasks, but you’ll be unable to complete them. Simply managing all the tasks will take so much time that you rarely get anything finished.

For an individual employee, working on two to three topics simultaneously is considered to be the best utilization of his or her time. This, however, does include the daily routine tasks, leaving capacity for only one or two side projects. Anything more will start to clog things up.

For organizations – say a plant or similar entity – there is, of course, more capability. However, these projects probably need a few key people (e.g., a master foreman, an engineer, or a programmer) to make this happen. In this case, they are the bottleneck on the number of projects that a plant can do simultaneously, and the system will get clogged up again.

In manufacturing, one key concept for a lean manufacturing system is to limit the work in progress. To avoid overloading the system, a new work order is started only if a previous work leaves the system.

The most popular concept in lean manufacturing for this is Kanban, where a new part is produced only if a previous part has left the system. Another possible approach would be a Constant Work in Progress system, better known as CONWIP. The latter has advantages for a high-variety, low-volume mix of production. In any case, the workload in the factory has to be limited; otherwise, work in progress will inflate, costs will increase, and delivery times will suffer.

This importance of limiting the number of works in progress also applies to project management. As a manufacturing system starts to clog up with too much work in progress, so will you. Simply managing the projects will take more time than actually advancing projects, and your change process slows down.

The solution is the same: Limit the number of projects that are active simultaneously. Start a new project only after a previous one has been completed. This way you will increase the number of projects completed. Even more important, projects are completed much faster.

An simple way to limit the number of projects that are active simultaneously is a project management board. Limit the space for the number of active projects on the board. In the example below, we have left space only for four projects, each represented by an A3 (a single sheet of paper to keep track of the project status, popular in lean manufacturing). All other projects that pop up are added to a waiting list. Only when a previous project is completed does a new project move into its place. Thus you can both limit and keep track of the number of active projects.

So how many projects should you have active simultaneously? It depends. As mentioned above, a single person works best with around two to three active projects (including daily chores). However, in the western world, management is used to higher numbers, and telling your boss that you won’t start a project because you already have two projects going may raise an eyebrow or two. Depending on your boss, you may take on more projects than ideal for the sake of appearance. I don’t like it, but I have been there, too.

As for larger groups, it is also necessary to restrict the number of ongoing projects. For example, if you manage a plant, multiple people will take on different projects. However, the restriction here is the people needed to make the projects work (e.g., the master foreman, engineers, or programmers). Hence I also would not shoot too high, but the details depend heavily on your plant.

Once a project is completed, a new project is selected. The next insight will explain how to prioritize and select a project among many projects.

There are some variations possible. We already mentioned above that the axes may have slightly different labels, albeit to similar effect. The axes may be called, for example, effort/cost/difficulty/time and impact/value/benefit/profit. Depending on how you orient the axes, of course, the ideal projects may be in a different corner.

A variation may also be to include a third data set, where the third set is represented by the size of the bubble as shown below. Thus you can add a third factor in the evaluation. For example, you could split impact into financial benefit and non-financial benefit. Other possible third variables are prestige, customer preference, or strategic importance (although the last one is often mixed up with “the CEO really really likes that one…”).

However, a third variable makes things more murky and often confuses more than helps. Hence our advice is: Stick to two variables!

Another variation is to split the matrix into four or nine fields and start processing the fields in a certain order. You can even give the fields fancy names like “Stars” or “Go” for the upper right in the example, and “NoGo‘s” or “Stop” for the lower left. Consultants like to do that; this sounds more professional.

As said above, the impact effort matrix is a very quick but useful tool to make sure you put your effort in the right project. We hope this article helps you in your daily work.

For everyday practical decisions, we prefer a faster version of the cost benefit analysis: an impact–effort matrix. There are different versions of this matrix found on the web, often with slightly different names. In essence, however, one axis shows the effort/cost/difficulty/time that has to be put into a project and the other shows the impact/value/benefit/profit that the project will yield.

To create such a matrix, a knowledgeable group should get together (a representative of the workers, leadership, engineering, logistics, etc., as needed) and quickly evaluate each project based on their gut feelings on both axes. The absolute placement is less relevant; rather, the relation of the projects to each other is of importance. This way dozens of projects can be evaluated within just a few minutes. An example result is shown below.

Of course, since the whole estimation is based on gut feeling, the precision is lacking. But then, a full cost benefit analysis also often lacks precision. Additionally, the question is not which project to do, but which project to do first. A close second project will not be erased forever but will also be done eventually, just a bit later.

In the example above, the most desirable projects are in the upper right corner, where the projects have a big impact but require little effort. The best project to do next is the project closest to the upper right corner. In the example above, project number 7 brings the largest benefit for the effort. Hence, such a matrix is a very quick and accurate enough method to prioritize your projects.

The obvious solution to determine the project with the best cost–benefit ratio is to do a cost benefit analysis. A cost benefit analysis determines a joint metric (usually monetary), including all the costs and benefits for each project. Future costs and benefits may be discounted with inflation to estimate a current day value. After calculating the cost benefit for all possible projects, the project with the largest benefit is chosen.

A variation of this is the time until the return of investment (ROI). In this case, the time when the upfront costs are returned by the benefits is calculated. In most industries, this ROI is desired to be less than two years, (i.e., the project should pay for itself within two years). The most preferred project is the project with the fastest return on investment.

However, in my view for most lean projects, a cost benefit analysis or a ROI analysis is overkill. There are two reasons for that. First of all, a cost benefit analysis is, in my experience, usually very imprecise. Besides requiring a lot of current data, it also needs substantial data on future events to give a reasonably accurate value. Even if the current data is available, data on future events is nothing more than guesswork. In the worst case, highly optimistic assumptions are made to push a particular project through or highly pessimistic assumptions are made to stop another project (just watch the TV news on political projects and you know what I mean…).

Secondly, a cost benefit analysis is time consuming and therefore expensive. It will take quite a lot of man hours to put together a good analysis. This may be worthwhile for multi-million-dollar projects, but most lean projects are on a much smaller scale. Hence, for lean projects, it is usually not worth the effort. In other words, the cost benefit analysis of doing a cost benefit analysis is negative.

We determined it was best to start a new project only when a previous project is completed. The question is now, among the many different projects waiting, which one do we start? There are many different ways of how not to pick the next project. Just picking one is already much better than starting with all tasks, but there are still plenty of wrong reasons to pick a task :

• Random Pick
• First Come First Serve
• Last Come First Serve (the older ones are being forgotten, and it shows action on new problems)
• Quickest to Do
• Most Annoying or Powerful Task Giver

What we want is the biggest bang for the buck. Which project will give us the largest benefit for our effort?