Archive 2020

Having completed the year Lecturing to undergraduates, at Wolverhampton University, its time to reflex.

Lean or Agile or, this new term Lagile. Which to choose. Why bother at all.

I posed the question, if you were selling a product and making over 80% profit would you bother with lean or agile?
What is the business benefit? Why would we bother? what is the business imperative? where is the real benefit (minus the investment) in £ or $ or € DON’T JUST DO IT ‘CAUSE IT SOUNDS GOOD.

Clearly, we must think of lean / agile manufacturing in the business context. That all actions for improvement MUST have tangible / measurable benefits. There is no point in pouring £ks in to refining a process of a product or service that no one wants.

Many text book examples refer to repetitive processes, medium to high volume. So how do we manage Lean / Agile in bespoke Engineering?

All good questions :

How to set the right price for innovation.

Whether you are a new enterprise looking for a company-wide pricing model, or a well-established organisation planning to launch a new product, the initial prices will significantly determine your position within the market. A position that is hard to change. In fact, 80 to 90 percent of poor pricing models price products too low, leaving substantial amounts of money on the table and making customers raise doubts about the quality of the offering. On the other hand, if the price is too high, it can scare customers away.

Content

• The importance of price in supporting innovation and long-term profit growth 
• Common mistakes when pricing new technologies
• Why segmentation is fundamental to an optimised value-based pricing strategy
• Tools and methodologies to establish customer value / price
  • Perceived value
  • Financial value
  • Utilising customer research
• Using different price structures to communicate value and overcoming barriers to adoption e.g. leasing, pay per use, performance-based pricing.
• Supporting price implementation through the sales team and wider organisation.

Its interesting to think about how to measure technology development .

TRL and MRL are no longer sufficient measures, given that we are developing processes and product design simulation capability

Technology evaluation, the discussion continues

We need to think about accelerating technology to market, and thus the measures based on physical prototypes needs to be rethought. At TaBA Associates we are working with leading Universities to further the debate.

During 2019 and through the year of 2020 TaBA Associates have developed the licience agreement for Salop Design and Engineering (now SDE Technology) to use the HFQ technology .

Richard Homden and Jonathan Watkins sealed the deal with a handshake

Les Gill that led to the re branding of Salop Design and Engineering , to SDE Technology, lightweighting experts https://www.sde.technology/.

Les is also on the Advisory Panel for SDE Technology, supporting their new business strategy development.

TaBA Les Gill , saying that the team of Roland and Shirley at Cherry Branding are great assets to draw upon for the rebranding and PR strategy. Helping shaping things to come

Off of the back of the intensive work to deliver a workable licience agreement with Impressions Technology Ltd, on the use of HFQ . TaBA are the project leaders for the lightweighting development at SDE Technology.

The story doesn’t end there,

TaBA Associates , Les Gill And Gareth Purdy have been working with SDE on, tactical factory transformation.

Using Standard Operating processes , 5s and Work cell visualisations techniques to improve operating efficiencies.

Drive down inventory, improve throughput, Reduce operating cost.

See The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

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