Dairy Crest, JUGIT™ and overdesign

Dairy Crest in the UK has just announced the relaunch of their redesigned JUGIT™.

As a Canadian in a marketplace that has used milk bags for many years, this seems like a bit of overdesign to me.

At our house we place the bag in either a plastic or ceramic jug, grab a pair of scissors and snip the corner off one end, then pour. When the bag is empty, we take it out and throw it away, recycle it or clean it and reuse it for sandwiches. Every so often we clean the jug itself, but not everytime because the inside only gets wet really when there is a factory-created leak. Nothing ever touches the milk itself.





This JUGIT™, on the otherhand, has a lot of pieces. And the spout needs to be washed whenever a bag is emptied and a new one put in. Is all this design necessary?

When designing something, you have to consider what the needs of the client or customer are and how they fit into the bigger picture - cost, safety, ease of function and overall satisfaction. Sometimes you have to fight the "Not Invented Here" syndrome where someone does not want to do it a certain way simply because that is the way someone else did it!

3 questions about the British consumer and British marketplace come to my mind when I see this JUGIT™ design:
1. Are people worried about milk taking on odours of other foods in the fridge?
2. Aseptically packaged milk (more prevalent in UK than Canada), has a longer shelf life while waiting to be opened. Is the consumer looking for a way to extend the shelf-life after the bag is opened?
3. Are people concerned with lack of space in the fridge and therefore want to be able to put product on top of the jug when it is on the shelf at home?

I love using a bag vs using a jug. Glass bottles are cool but with kids comes the worry of breakage.

I know I haven't touched much on overdesign. It is very easy to get carried away when designing a new product or simply a remedy to an existing problem. Just remember, Keep It Simple, Sweetie! Don't ignore a solution that is right in front of you because someone else came up with it. But, hardest of all, let go. Don't stick with an idea when something new comes along, just because the old idea is what is you are familiar with. Maybe this new design IS better!
(Sainsbury is selling this new JUGIT™.)

Launch of Facebook page

Hi
I recently launched the Facebook page for my company and I would encourage you to take a look at it.

I will be updating it with manufacturing related items about the food industry, some points about project management and information about any of our upcoming lunch and learns, workshops and speaking events.

Thanks
Gemma

forming, storming, norming, performing and...adjourning

During the 16 years I have been optimizing, troubleshooting and developing process, I learnt about the phases a team can go through. I saw it in action as well as in theory.

It actually is quite interesting to see how teams can follow the 4 well known steps - forming, storming, norming and performing. Until recently though, I had never known about the 5th phase - adjourning.

For those of you not familiar with Bruce Tuckman's model, when a team first gets together, people are feeling each other out, trying to figure out what is acceptable and what the team is about. This is known as "forming". It can also be known as the polite phase.

Then the gloves are taken off and along comes the rocky stage or "storming". By this time the team is starting to challenge each other, push the boundaries and start pushing their own perspectives. Sounds scary and even like something you don't want, but it is actually great for getting things out in the open, getting the creative juices flowing and pushing the team. The trick though is getting the team through this phase and out the other side.

The other side is the "norming" phase. Now that the team has worked out some of the issues, there is an understanding of how to work together and the productivity levels start to increase, moral starts to improve and synergies form. Since this is often drawn as a plateau (forming), followed by a downslope (storming) and then a gentle upslope (norming), you can imagine there may be some sliding backward into the valley of storming! But, the recovery can (or should) be a lot quicker.

Eventually (and can be quite fast), the team moves into "performing". Now that the environment has been set and people are working together, conflict is seen as productive, collaborative and respectful. The synergies of the team are creating very powerful results.

And that was all I had been taught. Now I have learned there is another phase; "adjourning" or "mourning". Actually it makes a lot of sense. This assumes that a team is only together for a specific purpose and that purpose has been fulfilled. Now the team needs to get closure and be ready to move on. It is about celebrating success and recognizing growth.

In this day and age where there is so much fluidity in roles and projects though, this should be considered on an individual level as well as the team. Sometimes a person is moved onto a new challenge before the team has completed the old challenge. This can end up with someone feeling in limbo as their work was never quite done. A simple meeting between the team leader and the individual reflecting on contributions can ease this.

On the other hand, new peple can join a team. This can actually put the group all the way to the norming stage depending on the amount of distruption the knew person can bring. Knowing these dynamics, while stressful going through them, can be helpful because you know what comes next and now you can work towards getting to the performing stage!

Value vs Cost

How do you value your product? Is it a fixed value or a variable value?

This IS a different question that saying how do you cost your product. It also gets at the question of what comes first, the chicken (cost) or the egg (value)?

Value is a more ephemeral than cost and can be broken down into 2 types of value - the value it brings to the business and the value it gives the customer. Cost is a measure of the transformations that occur to the product on its way from conception to eventual destruction (though this is often shortened to the cost up to when the customer takes possession of it).

If the cost exceeds the value, then a business needs to consider continuing production. If the value exceeds the cost, then the business should be making a profit. Tying these two together is the price.

Back to the chicken and the egg and price. And this is where sales, marketing and manufacturing can be at loggerheads. Does the price reflect the cost (chicken) or the value (egg) and which is the constraint? Therefore, which does a company work on when the cost exceeds the value? Smart answer is both (cost and value), the easy answer is cost and the tricky answer is value. Manufacturing is told to reduce cost, sales and marketing are told to increase perception of value. Both sides of the organization though need to look at what value they are adding and how to transform that into an actual value for the customer and not just a perceived value.

Fundamental to all approaches to make value more than the cost is that proper understanding of the values and costs of the transformation process. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Value Stream Analysis (VSA) attempt to capture the value and highlight areas of cost. It is more than just showing all the steps, from order placement to order fulfillment, it is about highlighting time, effort and waste streams.

It can highlight areas were low value steps can either be eliminated or modified to become high value. Sometimes this is by speeding up the process, smaller lot sized, exchanging a raw material for another or by finding a different use for the waste (think whey, was a waste now a premium item in health food stores!)

Value is variable, though price may not. Cost is merely a reflection of the value someone else places on for their own product or service. What would your process look like if you focused on increasing value throughout your processes and merely used cost to measure that success?