A guide for industrial providers: How to create new Industry 4.0 products

Transcription

1 A guide for industrial providers: How to create new Industry 4.0 products A joint white paper by Bosch Rexroth and Bosch Software Innovations November 2017 bosch-si.com/i40-guide

2 A guide for industrial providers: How to create new Industry 4.0 products 2 Index 1) Intro 4 Motivation Methodology 2) 15 hypotheses for creating new I4.0 products: What makes the difference for providers? 1. Innovation search fields 1. Focus all your efforts on the user 5 2. Think outside the box of classical product innovation 8 3. Broaden your scope Success factors of innovative product development 4. Speed is crucial: Accelerate! Play! Explore! Iterate! The supporting framework 7. Sequence matters: In what ways? Prepare to be surprised Organizational conditions 9. Incubate! Stay honest with yourself Disrupt yourself The Ecosystem 12. Customers become part of the development process Cooperation & culture The soft factors 14. Trust in the Young & Wild Enable the winning team 36 3) Summary: What can you take away 38 from our survey of product and innovation managers? The authors 40

3 A guide for industrial providers: How to create new Industry 4.0 products 3 Focus all your efforts on the user Think outside the box 2 Broaden your scope Enable the winning team Innovation search fields Speed is crucial: Accelerate! 4 Trust in the Young & Wild 14 The soft factors Success factors of innovative product development Play! Explore! 5 Cooperation & culture Iterate! 13 The Ecosystem The supporting framework 6 Customers become part of the development process 12 Organizational conditions Sequence matters: In what ways? 7 Disrupt yourself Prepare to be surprised 11 Stay honest with yourself Incubate! clustered hypotheses: What makes the difference for providers when generating new Industry 4.0 business

4 1) Intro 4 Motivation I4.0 products These are taken to encompass both new services and technologies as well as extensions and improvements to existing products made possible by IoT technologies. In recent years, many industrial users have seen the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and made their first ventures into the arena. And yet, there are still comparatively few examples of new value added products arising from Industry 4.0 (which we refer to as I4.0 products for short). Such products are based on new insights into the condition, use, performance, and location of machinery, tools, and systems that are digitally connected with each other. These insights can generate whole new revenue streams based on new products and services, or else be used to improve existing offerings, particularly their user friendliness. We wanted to find out what success factors come into play in the generation of such new I4.0 products, and how various enterprises are applying them. You can read about the results of our survey of nine industry partners in this white paper. Fifteen hypotheses serve to illustrate the experience gained by a broad range of providers in the industrial sector experience you can now leverage for your own projects. We do not claim to be representative in this respect. Methodology In the period from mid-june to mid-july 2017, we carried out partly standardized interviews with product managers and innovation managers who are responsible for digital and connected projects, products, and services. The companies cover a broad spectrum: established machine vendors; service and hardware companies who offer I4.0 products themselves; service and software companies that support industrial manufacturers on the road to digital products; and everything in between. The standardized part asked the respondents to rate given hypotheses in terms of how relevant they believe them to be on the path towards creating new I4.0 products. Based on their answers, we developed the following 15 hypotheses grouped into six categories (see overview graphic 15 clustered hypotheses ) that may serve as guidelines for you as a provider in the I4.0 sector. The 15 hypotheses were also shaped by the respondents experiences as related in the open-ended question section of the interviews. All 15 hypotheses are handled using the same format. As well as an explanation for easy orientation, you can expect to find the following: Recommendations and limitations; Examples of good practice; and How-tos.

5 2) 15 hypotheses for creating new I4.0 products: What makes the difference for providers? 5 1 Innovation search fields Focus all your efforts on the user Customer orientation has always been an obvious factor determining the success of product development. That is no surprise, as it is the users of technologies and solutions who ultimately decide where investments should go, just as they determine the commercial success of new products and services. Accordingly, all the product managers surveyed agree that the customer must be the focus of innovation and product development activities. Today, at the dawn of the fourth Industrial Revolution, there are two additional aspects to consider: IoT technologies open up previously unimagined degrees of freedom. This makes it all the more important not to exercise these possibilities for their own sake, but to keep the focus on the use cases to be resolved. As users of technology and solutions in our private lives, all of us today are very exacting, especially when it comes to response times and personalized offerings. Although the B2B domain is clearly differentiated from B2C by virtue of much stronger systematization and formalization of decision-making and purchasing processes, the expectations, approaches, and concepts from the private domain are progressively gaining ground in the business environment also. Providers of I4.0 products must adjust to this situation. These considerations lead product innovators to focus on individual user groups instead of customers, who are ultimately anonymous after all. In requirements development, it is essential to comprehend both the motivation and the context of use instead of plunging headlong into technical specifications.

6 2) 15 hypotheses for creating new I4.0 products: What makes the difference for providers? 6 Recommendations For all phases of product development, find a targeted way to integrate customers and users of the solution, covering everything from focus group surveys to working with the customer on site according to your offering and phase. This works a bit like a funnel: there is a lot of input as representative as possible at the beginning, which is then progressively channeled over time. Possible stages for customer integration: Invitation to visit provider (showrooms, technology parks) Visits to selected customers, inquiring about their various needs and observing their operations (workshops; appointments for observing them at work) Product managers work for a week on the premises of customers primed for innovation, actively cultivating an understanding for the company s business that they wouldn t be able to get sitting at their desks. Personas are a good example of user-focused development techniques. Data collected on various real-life people is compiled into a fictional personality called a persona, described in terms of personality traits, background, jobs, and challenges. Personas are an effective tool for never losing sight of users and their needs: from requirements development (what use cases does the persona have?) and development (what features are relevant for the persona?) through to the first fast validation test (does the draft fulfil the persona s requirements?). Limitations: How far customer integration can go After recording customer input, each of the further development phases should be closed off from customer involvement. In the experience of our interview partners, in these phases it is important not to admit any distraction; not to focus on the individual customer, but on the broader themes at hand. Companies must not fall into the trap of creating overly individualized products that miss the target of the wider I4.0 market. When patentability is a factor, there are limits to integrating customers early on in the creation process of I4.0 products.

7 2) 15 hypotheses for creating new I4.0 products: What makes the difference for providers? 7 Examples of good practice Approach taken by a machine manufacturer: Once the initial main customer input has been recorded, the product is defined in a swift, agile manner. As soon as the minimum viable product (MVP) is defined, it is immediately tested with selected customers from the requirements group. The findings are fed back directly and further piloted if required. Approach taken by a manufacturer of special machinery (precision agriculture): In certain phases, it is useful for a product manager to work onsite with the customer for a week. The goal here is to map the entire working environment instead of just individual operation steps and thereby discover where the greatest optimization potential lies. How-to: Apply design thinking methodology Design thinking is available as a reference methodology for ensuring that the focus remains on users throughout all phases of product development: Context of use: Clarifying the context of use in advance of requirements development. Observe users so as to become aware of innovation fields and gain a deep understanding of user needs. Derive user requirements: A use case comprises the user and the user story. Following the persona method, a fictional user is described, together with his/her background, motivation, pain points, jobs, etc., in order to obtain a shared image of the user inside the team. Regular meetings with the principal stakeholders help in understanding customers needs even better. Develop the user story along the questions <Who?> wants <what?>, in order to <reason: why?>. Design: One product manager: You need phases with and without customers. Actual development is best accomplished in a short, effective iterative process by the innovation team. User test: In the manufacture of special machinery, the product development team often works with focus groups in order to capture the customer voice but also works with individual customers.

8 A guide for industrial providers: How to create new Industry 4.0 products 8 Download the full Industry 4.0 guide here. The authors Janette Kothe Bosch Rexroth Sharing her experiences from four years of working on I4.0 solutions, Janette strongly believes in collaborating and exchanging as the major success factors in innovation. For her, shaping the fourth industrial revolution is not only a challenge but also a great creative opportunity for a whole generation of engineers. Stefanie Peitzker Bosch Software Innovations Stefanie applies agile methods to design sprints for marketing. She considers the marketing of connected IoT and I4.0 solutions to go far beyond traditional approaches. It can start as early as finding co-creation partners at the MVP stage. In her opinion, listening to customers must become an integral part of digital marketing for new I4.0 offerings.