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“The results exceeded my expectations. It shows that our team can meet the demands of a significant technical challenge when innovative management techniques are used."

Robert Fox, President

Product development team strategizes action items in the Conax ‘War Room’.

Firm Benefits

New product developed in 67 days, a fraction of the typical development time
Customer selected Conax Technologies as their primary supplier
Technical patents being explored
Process being applied as a template for new products

Conax Technologies, LLC is a developer and manufacturer of custom-designed, high performance temperature sensors and pressure/vacuum sealing assemblies. The company has been serving applications in power generation, semiconductor manufacture, petroleum and chemical processing, aerospace, nuclear, steel, pharmaceutical, food processing, and general industry for over 50 years. The Cheektowaga, NY company employs 80 at a fully integrated modern facility that features some of the most sophisticated manufacturing systems in the industry. Conax competes by utilizing its talented in-house engineering staff and integrated manufacturing capability to offer quick turnaround solutions to challenging application specific problems.

Situation - Fix it Now!

One of Conax's major customers informed Conax that they had just tested a competitor's new sensor, and that it had a 70% longer life in the customer's highly corrosive manufacturing process. The longer product life offered significantly increased manufacturing throughput and cost savings due to a longer duration between maintenance shutdowns. The customer informed Conax that they had 60 to 90 days to develop an equivalent product or risk losing all of their business.

Conax recognized that it could not meet the time challenge using its routine product development process, and therefore had to try a different approach. They engaged an Insyte Consulting professional with substantial experience in managing new product development to facilitate the effort to develop a new product in this incredibly short time frame.

The difficulty of the situation was compounded by a lack of product samples to study the failure mode, lack of detailed information about the customer's operating environment, and an inability to simulate the customer's operating conditions at Conax.

Solution - The War Room

A diverse team of 'thinkers' and 'doers' from manufacturing, engineering and technical sales support was formed, and a conference room was set aside as the ‘war room’. The Insyte consultant's first step was to emphasize that the development approach was not going to be a typical, business-as-usual product development methodology, and that some of the activities would be uncomfortably different from the standard development process.

To drive fast turnaround, a cadence of frequent short meetings was established to brainstorm, define action items and report on outcomes. The diversity of the team expanded idea generation and accelerated idea refinement. The 'war room' walls were used to display flip chart sheets that tracked issues, possible solutions and action items so that progress was highly visible. The Insyte consultant pushed thinking beyond the company's comfort zone, facilitated 'out-of-the-box' ideas, and challenged fall backs to slower traditional practices. The probability of success was increased by defining small incremental action items and by exploring multiple technical paths in parallel. The consultant's technical product development background also enabled him to contribute ideas and to help the group overcome obstacles that could delay progress.

Results - Customer Selects Conax as its Supplier

The strategy was to build up several product variations using different design concepts which could then be tested at the customer. Conax stretched the technology by incorporating features that differed from commonly accepted practices in the industry. In order to overcome supplier delivery issues, Conax took calculated risks by using less preferred technical alternatives that would verify a concept and keep development on schedule.

Samples for several new design variations were sent to the customer in 67 days of the start of the project. The customer reported back that after 28 days of testing that one version of the multiple designs under test met the targeted operating life. After several months of extensive testing of both Conax's and the competitor's products, the customer selected Conax as their primary supplier. As a result, Conax is investigating the patentability of some of the technical concepts developed.

The success of the accelerated new product development process has been motivating for the development team. They are gradually applying it to other challenging technical problems and in the development of strategic new products.

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