Managing the Product Development Funnel at CSA
Make More and Better Product Decisions for Greater Impact
Sean Osborne sosborne@cooperstandard.com (248)-495-1326
Director, R&D and Advanced Engineering
Cooper Standard Automotive – Global Fluid Systems Division
Storyboard Presentation – Enabling Tools
February 20-21, 2007 / St. Pete’s Beach, FL
Cooper Standard Automotive
Sean Osborne
Company Description:
Cooper Standard Automotive - Global Fluid Systems
“Driving Value through Innovation”

Innovations are solicited with the “Innovation Quest”
Idea Generation Program.

All new product projects are approved by the
executive staff at gate reviews.
The Fluid Systems Division has organized to ring
fence new product development resources.

Unique Requirements for Product Innovation:
Managing the product development funnel:
 At CSA global fluid systems we manage the process to
achieve results.
 We use a funnel concept to measure and ensure
the health of our process.
 The funnel concept leads to two basic questions.
1) Are you separating the wheat from the chaff?
2) Are your products moving toward launches?
 The funnel also underscores one of the most strategic
decisions. What projects should be stopped or killed?
 The front end of the funnel should be full of ideas.
6
350
Ideas
Annually
3
1
Projects Killed by stage
in Previous Year
28 ideas
in
idea bank
Launched
Number of Projects by Stage
Scoping Business Develop Validate
Stage Case Stage Stage
Stage
4
3
2
2
Storyboard Presentation – Enabling Tools
February 20-21, 2007 / St. Pete’s Beach, FL
Launched in
Previous year
5
Cooper Standard Automotive
Sean Osborne
Illustration of Your Stage-Gate Process:
The Product Innovation Process - “A Decision Factory”

An “Innovation Quest” Idea Generation Program is used to
solicit innovations from 8000 employees.

Project Reviews are used to improve project execution.

Semi-annual portfolio reviews are held to take a holistic
view of new product projects and confirm resource
application to projects by priority.
Decisions are made throughout the Stage-Gate process to
choose the right projects and do projects right.

Unique Customization of Stage-Gate:








Idea
Generation
Program
Project
Reviews
- Scope
- Schedule
- Budget
Portfolio Reviews
- Prioritize
- Kill
- Allocate resources
Stage-Gate® Process
Business
Develop Validate
Scope
Case
Gate
Gate
Gate
Gate
Gate
0
1
2
3
4
Customer
Decision Gates Guide New Product
Quantity, Quality and Execution
Creating impact with an integrated product development process.
We get our products right by better understanding the customer’s voice, creating concepts with unrivalled customer value and
meeting our cost and timing targets. This is an additional integrated element, called Design for Six Sigma, used by practitioners.
We choose the right projects by first defining and selecting attractive market segments. We decide which projects will have the
most impact and continually ask tough questions at gate reviews to determine whether we should proceed or kill projects.
The funnel tool measures whether the Stage Gate and other processes are being effectively used to commercialize products.
The funnel concept leads us to make more decisions to keep the process productive.
Managing the process flow funnel results in higher throughput and reduced cycle time.
Focusing concentrates resources and helps improve the quality of decisions and quality of execution. In other words, we spend
more time and effort on more important projects.
We have limited resources and are very careful not to overload our resources with too many projects.
A key resultant of focusing on fewer projects is launching more products. With more products launched and less Work-InProcess, our process cycle time dropped from 7.5 years to about 2 years.
Storyboard Presentation – Enabling Tools
February 20-21, 2007 / St. Pete’s Beach, FL
Cooper Standard Automotive
Sean Osborne
Implementation Team:
Results:

 Higher Sales
(8x in 4 yrs)
 Higher Margins
 More Launches
The team involved the following primary members:
- New product process leader
- Marketing director
- R&D director

Critical to the team’s success was/is support from the
President.

Participation of the gatekeepers and practitioners is
necessary to evolve the processes to fit the culture.
 Faster Launches
25
Began Developing
a New Product
Decision Process
in January 2002
20
New
Product 15
Revenue
10
($M)
5
0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Product
Launches
0
2
3
3
3
5
5
Lessons Learned:
Making more & better decisions creates impact.
•
You can’t force success by simply forcing the launch of more
new products or demanding shorter development time.
•
Don’t get lost in the details about what best practices are.
Concentrate leadership efforts on what best practices do.
Management must make choices and focus.
Make sure your new product development process is leading
to decisions to weed out less successful projects. Celebrate
your kills.
Support your new product teams by making as many high
quality strategic decisions as possible.
Help the new product teams make tactical decisions which
will improve project execution.
-
•
•
Quantity of
Decisions
Quality of
Execution
Quality of
Decisions
Storyboard Presentation – Enabling Tools
February 20-21, 2007 / St. Pete’s Beach, FL
Impact