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Cost Reduction/Avoidance for High Tech Products

Consider this:

• † Studies show that 80% of all of the costs associated with a product during its lifetime are designed in during the conceptual messy front-end phase of product design.
• As competitors in a particular market space become equally adept at rapid product development and deployment, the focus of competition turns to price, cost and margin.
• As product development accelerates and product life shrinks, there is less opportunity to fix a product's cost after launch.
• Competitive landscapes are continually shifting as competitors learn tricks from their rivals.
• Agility of response is becoming more rapid and more multidimensional. More people need to be involved.
• Companies that enjoy strong margins have more competitive flexibility than those under margin and price pressure.

†Source: U.S. Defense Systems Management College.

The Premise

One of the most complex technical problems these days is the need for an organization to deal effectively with the messy, multistakeholder, high risk game of product development and introduction.

A truly great product is measured on a number of dimensions depending on who is looking at it.

Market timeliness, ease of manufacture, feature functionality, repairability, installability, total cost of ownership, ease of decommissioning, are among the many factors that can influence the value of a product. These attributes are often in conflict with each other during the design process, and different people are usually responsible for each one.

Conflict is common.

Advances in the behavioural sciences in the last twenty years have now resulted in robust methods for dealing with complex problems of this type.

These methods are surprisingly simple to apply.

The Talk

This talk is about adding literally MILLIONS of dollars to your bottom line by making a few simple changes internally to your manufacturing and supplier processes.

Guided by the methods he has developed for identifying opportunities for cost reduction and avoidance in a high tech product environment, Dr. Clifford Saunders has helped clients realize savings in the tens of millions of dollars over as little as a year! An incredible feat by any measure in today's cost conscious leading organizations.

During this presentation, you will be taken step by step through the resolution of the ‘messy' multistakeholder problem that challenges most organizations' attempts at not only reducing product costs, but avoiding them as well before they are incurred at the design stage.

You will have the opportunity to learn how to:

• pick a suitable product for cost reduction and the margin improvement needed
• identify the usual and unusual suspects (participants) who can assist in the endeavour
• assemble the group
• set up the appropriate physical environment for the exercise
• set up the appropriate psychological environment so that people feel safe, comfortable and creative
• elicit the ideas
• organize and combine the ideas into useful approaches
• select the most valuable approaches and ideas
• estimate the new cost profiles
• develop work plans to ensure that the new ideas get implemented
• set up an audit trail to verify the results

The Take-Aways

You will learn two methods of cost reduction:

• Method 1 - Reducing cost after product launch and deployment
• Method 2 - Avoiding costs before designs are frozen and flexibility is lost

You will receive a handout that outlines these processes in a simple step-by-step manner.

AND you will have a great time!

About the Speaker

Cliff Saunders is a renowned speaker, facilitator, teacher, author and consultant to Fortune 500 corporations worldwide.

He holds a BSc in Engineering, a MSc in Applied Psychology, and a Ph.D in Cybernetics.

His life's work has been dedicated to helping large organizations solve messy, complex, intractable problems.

Today, he focuses on helping people feel and function better in their every day personal and professional lives.

For more information on this or other topics, or to book Dr. Saunders to speak, facilitate or teach for your organization in this or other areas of expertise, please contact us.