Accelerating product development in the high-tech industry in the Netherlands
The high-tech industry in the Netherlands
The high-tech industry plays an essential role in devising and realizing solutions to global societal challenges.
These are challenges in the areas of mobility, health, renewable energy, security and climate change.
The Dutch high-tech industry stands strong in the international world thanks to its innovative strength, strong clusters, international partnerships and a focus on sustainability.
These factors make the Netherlands a leading player in the global high-tech industry.
Contact Edwin E-mail: e.schumacher@synergio.nl Phone: +31 6 5539 2010
Key challenges for the high-tech industry
Dutch high-tech companies are doing everything they can to maintain their competitive advantage.
In doing so, they run into a number of challenges in developing new products:
Talent shortage
Skill gap
There is a high demand for highly qualified technicians, while the supply is in short supply.
Rapid technological developments require continuous training and retraining of personnel to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and methods, for example, (Model-based) Systems Engineering.
Competitive pressure
Innovation
Competitive pressures force companies to constantly innovate and improve their products.
Fostering a culture of innovation within an organization can be challenging, especially in established companies with traditional structures.
Knowledge Sharing
Collaboration
The complexity of high-tech products requires collaboration across disciplines and companies.
Effective knowledge sharing and collaboration within and across organizations can sometimes be difficult to achieve, especially due to organizational silos.
Integration
Complexity
High-tech products are becoming increasingly complex, leading to longer development cycles.
Managing this complexity and integrating different technologies into a coherent product requires advanced project management skills and technological know-how.
Product development in the high-tech industry
The Dutch high-tech industry wants to maintain and further expand its competitive position.
To achieve this, taking into account a shortage of resources, a transition is needed from project-oriented product development to a product-oriented approach and eventually a platform-oriented way of product development.
Key improvements for the high-tech industry are:
Scalability and reuse
As a result, knowledge and resources are not optimally reused between projects. Product-Oriented Development: By moving to a product-oriented approach, the focus is on developing reusable components and systems that can be used in different products.
This makes it easier to develop new products faster and more cost-effectively. Platform-Oriented Development: Platform-oriented development uses shared architectures and technologies as the basis for multiple products.
This maximizes reuse which not only reduces development time and cost, but also increases quality and consistency.
Innovation speed and flexibility
This limits the speed of innovation. Product-Oriented Development: With a focus on products, innovation can happen faster because standardized processes and technologies are used.
This allows improvements and new features to be implemented more efficiently. Platform-Oriented Development: A platform-based approach offers maximum flexibility, as new products and features can be developed by building on top of an existing base layer of technology.
This enables rapid iterations and market introductions, essential in a competitive high-tech environment.
Market orientation and customer value
It allows companies to deliver customized solutions with a standard foundation, maximizing customer value.
Market leadership and competitive advantage
This creates high barriers to entry for competitors and builds customer loyalty.
Cost savings and efficiency
There is often a lack of synergies between projects, leading to waste and inefficiency. Product-oriented Development: By following a product-oriented model, companies can reduce costs through standardization and reuse of technologies and components.
This allows for a more efficient allocation of resources. Platform-Oriented Development: In a platform model, costs are further reduced because multiple products share the same core technologies and infrastructure.
This leads to economies of scale and lower operating costs across the entire product portfolio.
Accelerating product development in the high-tech industry
Since the number of available technicians will not increase anytime soon, the high-tech industry will have to maintain and build on its competitive position by transitioning to a platform-oriented way of product development and making existing employees more productive – “do more with less.”
Product development accelerators for the high-tech industry
Key product development accelerators that help transition to platform-oriented and make existing employees more productive are:
Innovation
Innovation is often a “fuzzy” process in its early stages.
This is because it is not yet about developing a product but building the knowledge needed to make crucial design choices and confident decisions so that you can develop the product accordingly.
Rapid Learning Cycles
Rapid Learning Cycles is a framework that allows you to build knowledge quickly and iteratively to make better choices and/or decisions.
We also call these choices/decisions Key Decisions.
Especially when a key decision has a crucial impact on the product and the knowledge to make the decision with confidence is missing, it is important to build this knowledge first before starting development.
This avoids high failure costs, delays in time-to-market and frustration among development teams and management.
Customer case
Read how one of our clients applied Rapid Learning Cycles to the development of a new, innovative product.
Standardization
Modular design is a method that uses standard designs (called modules or building blocks) that together form a system solution.
This greatly simplifies and speeds up the process of designing, planning and implementing projects.
Modular design
(Model-based)
Systems Engineering helps in modular design of system architecture and standard components.
It makes complexity more manageable through visual models.
It also creates a single source of truth which improves consistency and is a prerequisite for reuse.
Libraries
Libraries of standard modular components and specifications significantly accelerate the development of complex products in terms of communication, consistency, documentation, traceability, integration and verification.
Reuse
Based on standardized, modular components made available to projects from a library, costs and development time are reduced and products can be brought to market faster.
Continuous learning & improvement
Continuous learning and improvement is a process and not a “lessons learned” document that disappears into a drawer.
Make continuous learning and improvement an integral part of the product development process.
Organize continuous learning and improvement as an iterative process so that the product and the product development process improves step by step.
Read more about continuous learning and improvement here.
Customer case
Read how one of our customers implemented Continuous Learning & Improvement as an integral part of the product development process.
Strategic portfolio management
Strategic Portfolio Management links strategy and execution.
You define strategic themes and link them to objectives.
You then initiate change and improvement initiatives in line with the strategic themes.
You divide these initiatives into work packages and allocate them to the teams that execute them.
You execute the work iteratively so you keep your finger on the pulse and deliver when there is sufficient value.
The new functionality is used and you measure its contribution to the defined objective.
Read more about Strategic Portfolio Management here.
Iterative development
Agile and Lean methodologies are designed to increase the speed and flexibility of product development by breaking down the work into small work packages that can be delivered in a short-cycle manner by development teams.
Agile and Lean product development methods are not only suitable for software development.
Agile and Lean methods evolved from the development of physical products and are perfectly applicable there as well.
Scrum, Kanban, SAFe
Agile frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban and SAFe help teams work faster and more efficiently through short iterations and continuous improvement.
Product development flow
Product development flow is characterized by the work flowing smoothly through the value stream, with as few handovers, delays and correction work as possible.
Digitization
Digitization plays a critical role in accelerating the development of complex systems by providing a range of benefits that improve efficiency, accuracy and collaboration.
Product Line Engineering
TopTeam is a Model-Based Systems Engineering application with the following functionalities: Capturing and managing requirements from business, users and objects Model-Based Systems Engineering (SysML, UML, RML, BPMN) Capturing design choices and relating them to requirements Modeling functional and physical product decompositions and tracking requirements to them Reusing (the specifications of) standard components Capturing and managing libraries for reuse and working under architecture Verifying and validating specifications Capturing, managing, tracking and mitigating risks Collaborating integrally based on one version of the truth
Enterprise Agile Planning and Management
Target Process is an Enterprise Agile Planning application that supports both traditional projects and agile projects from portfolio to team level.
Key functionalities include: Agile and Lean methods such as Kanban, Scrum and SAFe. Strategic Portfolio Management for the purpose of strategy and its translation into execution, including measuring results based on OKRs. Continuous learning and improvement as an integral part of the product development process. Innovation acceleration and management by supporting Rapid Learning Cycles. Management Dashboards for visual display and monitoring of product development project progress.
- Accelerate innovation
-
Innovation
Innovation is often a “fuzzy” process in its early stages.
This is because it is not yet about developing a product but building the knowledge needed to make crucial design choices and confident decisions so that you can develop the product accordingly.Rapid Learning Cycles
Rapid Learning Cycles is a framework that allows you to build knowledge quickly and iteratively to make better choices and/or decisions.
We also call these choices/decisions Key Decisions.
Especially when a key decision has a crucial impact on the product and the knowledge to make the decision with confidence is missing, it is important to build this knowledge first before starting development.
This avoids high failure costs, delays in time-to-market and frustration among development teams and management.Customer case
Read how one of our clients applied Rapid Learning Cycles to the development of a new, innovative product.
- Standardize
-
Standardization
Modular design is a method that uses standard designs (called modules or building blocks) that together form a system solution.
This greatly simplifies and speeds up the process of designing, planning and implementing projects.Modular design
(Model-based)
Systems Engineering helps in modular design of system architecture and standard components.
It makes complexity more manageable through visual models.
It also creates a single source of truth which improves consistency and is a prerequisite for reuse.Libraries
Libraries of standard modular components and specifications significantly accelerate the development of complex products in terms of communication, consistency, documentation, traceability, integration and verification.
Reuse
Based on standardized, modular components made available to projects from a library, costs and development time are reduced and products can be brought to market faster.
- Improve continuously
-
Continuous learning & improvement
Continuous learning and improvement is a process and not a “lessons learned” document that disappears into a drawer.
Make continuous learning and improvement an integral part of the product development process.
Organize continuous learning and improvement as an iterative process so that the product and the product development process improves step by step.
Read more about continuous learning and improvement here.Customer case
Read how one of our customers implemented Continuous Learning & Improvement as an integral part of the product development process.
- Connect strategy and execution
-
Strategic portfolio management
Strategic Portfolio Management links strategy and execution.
You define strategic themes and link them to objectives.
You then initiate change and improvement initiatives in line with the strategic themes.
You divide these initiatives into work packages and allocate them to the teams that execute them.
You execute the work iteratively so you keep your finger on the pulse and deliver when there is sufficient value.
The new functionality is used and you measure its contribution to the defined objective.
Read more about Strategic Portfolio Management here. - Develop iteratively
-
Iterative development
Agile and Lean methodologies are designed to increase the speed and flexibility of product development by breaking down the work into small work packages that can be delivered in a short-cycle manner by development teams.
Agile and Lean product development methods are not only suitable for software development.
Agile and Lean methods evolved from the development of physical products and are perfectly applicable there as well.Scrum, Kanban, SAFe
Agile frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban and SAFe help teams work faster and more efficiently through short iterations and continuous improvement.
Product development flow
Product development flow is characterized by the work flowing smoothly through the value stream, with as few handovers, delays and correction work as possible.
- Digitize
-
Digitization
Digitization plays a critical role in accelerating the development of complex systems by providing a range of benefits that improve efficiency, accuracy and collaboration.
Product Line Engineering
TopTeam is a Model-Based Systems Engineering application with the following functionalities: Capturing and managing requirements from business, users and objects Model-Based Systems Engineering (SysML, UML, RML, BPMN) Capturing design choices and relating them to requirements Modeling functional and physical product decompositions and tracking requirements to them Reusing (the specifications of) standard components Capturing and managing libraries for reuse and working under architecture Verifying and validating specifications Capturing, managing, tracking and mitigating risks Collaborating integrally based on one version of the truth
Enterprise Agile Planning and Management
Target Process is an Enterprise Agile Planning application that supports both traditional projects and agile projects from portfolio to team level.
Key functionalities include: Agile and Lean methods such as Kanban, Scrum and SAFe. Strategic Portfolio Management for the purpose of strategy and its translation into execution, including measuring results based on OKRs. Continuous learning and improvement as an integral part of the product development process. Innovation acceleration and management by supporting Rapid Learning Cycles. Management Dashboards for visual display and monitoring of product development project progress.
Want to know more?
If you are interested in learning where your product development process can be improved, please contact us.
Send us a message or schedule an appointment for an (online) conversation right away.
We’d love to help. We are Synergio.
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