Taking AIM at Improving Product Development in Consultant Firms

This project has been carried out in cooperation with Malarplast, a manufacturer of plasticproducts, and Avalon Innovation, an engineering consultant firm focusing on product development.The first objective was to develop a flexible storage solution for inflight and railwaycatering, using Avalon’s new development process Avalon Innovation Model (AIM). Malarplasthad realized a need for a product which they could produce as one solution which couldbe configured to divide their drawers, used by airline and railway caterers, into pockets ofdifferent sizes. The second objective was to evaluate and analyze how well AIM worked as aproduct development tool and process as well as a service product. With the intention ofproviding recommendations for improvements for further development of the model, both interms of a service product and as product development process.Proceeding according to AIM, user studies at caterers, during service on a train and at an airlineutility department were performed. User needs identified during these studies wereranked with the help of users, buyers, sellers and manufacturers of these kinds of products.Two main problems were found, these were: flexibility in terms of pocket sizes and a need tokeep food at an even temperature during transport. The final concept was for a flexible plasticinlay that creates pockets in the specified drawer. It was optimized to hold the most commonglass sizes reported by contacted airlines.AIM was analyzed through interviews and discussions with key personnel and practitioners ofAIM at Avalon. Theoretical studies through scientific articles and other literature resources aswell as impressions from the project mentioned above were also used. The result showed thatAIM was not well described in terms of when and where the specified development toolsshould be used as well as how. Further, a lack of functional integration of teams and customersin AIM was found, which could make the process less than optimal in terms of efficiencyand innovation success. Recommendations offered including improvements of the process’slayout and strategy in terms of handling iterations of product concepts and ideas, by makingthe process more agile and flexible. Also a better separation between AIM the product andAIM the process is recommended in order to improve the focus of the offer to customers aswell as the information given to developers.