"With the new tools, we are much closer to customers and can incorporate their needs into our development work much faster." This is just one finding from the so-called lighthouse project work to which Koch-Chemie has devoted itself in recent weeks. Together with the management consultancy SPROUT, new, agile working techniques were explored and tried out in order to drive innovation power and speed.
Tuesday was Lighthouse Day and so Koch-Chemie employees from the various departments involved in a product development met. In view of the rapid changes in environmental and customer requirements, the question arose again and again as to how it would be possible to develop innovation successes in an even more targeted manner. The project team found answers to this question.
In this interdisciplinary collaboration between Research & Development, Product Management, Sales, Purchasing, Production and Marketing, the existing structures and processes were first critically examined: Where can processes be made more efficient? How does cross-departmental coordination work? Which values and perspectives have so far stood in the way of innovation work? The most important finding here was again and again that it is only possible to define an innovation and management process that is standardized and forms a framework but at the same time is flexible enough to respond to changing customer or market requirements through cross-departmental, organized collaboration. The team agreed: "The collaborative, cross-functional approach led us to understand problems and possible solutions much better."
