Building on successful experience with Agile Anywhere in bringing a flagship imagesetter to market, Fujifilm uses Agile to step up the volume of innovative new product introductions.

Focusing the Picture on Competitive Advantage

Established in the UK in 1997, FUJIFILM Electronic Imaging Ltd (FFEI) is Fujifilm's only manufacturer of electronic pre-press equipment for Fujifilm outside of Japan. The company designs and manufactures state-of-the-art scanners, imagesetters, platesetters, and imaging software.

The prepress industry is fast-paced and competitive. In such highly demanding industries, companies first need to establish a clear and compelling competitive advantage to gain and hold market share, and this advantage is difficult to achieve with hardware alone. FFEI's peripheral product offerings and software enhancements add strong competitive value. But to maximize impact, such items must be readily available to meet demand at the time a new product is introduced.

FFEI's imagesetters are universally acknowledged by users as best in class, but FFEI does not sell its products directly to end users. They sell through a network of distributors, some of whom handle FFEI products exclusively, but many of whom also carry competitive product lines. Such distributors must }au}e FFEI's ability to continuously brim new products to market and make those products available when promised. FFEI cannot afford availability issues in a new product introduction, as multi-line distributors can substitute a competitor's product. Early product lifecycle sales are usually not subject to competitive or end-of-lifecycle discounting pressures, and are therefore highly profitable. Any waiting period represents lost revenue and profit opportunity for FFEI.

As FFEI prepared to introduce two lines of new-generation scanners, the company focused on shortening new product introduction cycles to improve the competitive position of new products. These products would have the dual market advantages of better image quality and signi$cantly lower prices. To reach projected sales targets, FFEI needed to drive even greater production volumes of the new, entry-priced products. In this transition, FFEI was able to manage the process of manufacturing both highly complex, low volume products with the new generation of high volume, lower complexity products across the supply chain.

Business Process EngineeringManager

FFEI utilizes both internal and external resources to efficiently build its highly complex, state-of-the-art products. Although FFEI outsources the manufacturing of several subassemblies, to assure maximum quality the company keeps final product mechanical/optical assembly in house. By outsourcing to leverage the capabilities of suppliers, FFEI not only improves time to market but, more importantly achieves faster ramp to volume production, further strengthening its competitive position.

Stepping Up, Delivering More

FFEI's objectives were to speed new product introductions, enable collaboration with supply chain partners in camping to volume production, and assure that parallel peripheral and software developments are kept on track for simultaneous delivery.

"We have been able to shorten new product introduction cycles using Agile," says Dave Arnold, FFEI Business Process Engineering Manager. "We first build engineering confirmation models, then follow with Manufacturing Proving models (MPM) before we release a product to full production. With our latest product, we moved very rapidly to iVIPiVI shaving an estimated 4-6 weeks off the development cycle Agile enables us to keep excellent control of product content across the supply chain during early development stages which are characterized by concurrent engineering activities and rapid change”

Agile is used to communicate accurate information right through the supply chain, delivering correct drawings to each supplier at the right time, and assuring that suppliers only have access to the parts they need, thus protecting FFEI's intellectual property and commercially sensitive information. "It is vital for us to include suppliers within our change processes," says Dave Arnold. "We get them involved earlier with visibility to the design changes that come every week, so we can he sure that prototype and production changes are communicated right away We are also integrating our printed circuit board manufacturer as a virtual FFEI department. They have log-in rights to our network, so they can retrieve relevant specifications and drawings, check parts stocks, and collaborate with us on our products"

"We have a two-stage release process," Arnold continues. "The First stage involves collaboration with suppliers-obtaining quotes and lead times and communicating parts changes. As soon as that's all signed off, we go to the second stage, where our EMS provider's manufacturing capability comes into play. IF we don't have the manufacturer intimately involved, we will potentially have problems."

GOAL: Shorten new product introduction cycles and time to volume production; create competitive advantage by improved availability of new products; outsource selected manufacturing to leverage supplier expertise.

Result: Reduced new product introduction times; introduced two competitive product lines; outsourced appropriate subassembly manufacturing.