OS CASE STUDY ANALYSIS:

MANAGING INNOVATION AT NYPRO INC .

Group 13
Phanindar Balla (213 |7560926046)
Mohd. Talha
(208 |8125200787)
Samarth Goel
(045|7356494651)
Himalaya Reddy (132|7382766777)
Nelisent Purti
(209|7356182517)
Elsa Gozin (IE)

Q1: How to know when an

innovation has occurred in a
company?

When a company is growing at a healthy rate, it must be

doing something right; and something its competitors are
not able to do, that allows it to grow and increase its market
share
When a company grows, there are lots of opportunities for
its employees to flex their entrepreneurial muscles.
If the growth rate becomes stagnant, it means the company
is not doing anything new or different, hence
entrepreneurial minds leave to seek opportunities
elsewhere.
When innovative people leave, they become entrepreneurs
to and could actually become competitors to the company.

Q2. How to decide to adopt these innovations companywide?

1.The benefit of an innovation is proved :

Bottom-up/Horizontal option

The CIT (Continuous Improvement team) in each plant is dedicated to development and
process improvement for each customer-specific project. Nypro can implement innovation only
in one test plant (often Clinton one) : if the benefit of a new process/technology is proved, the
CIT of other plants will copy it propose it to their customers
Each plan has a board who can validate a new process (found by its team) and proposes it as
a standard to be implemented company-wide

A customer has a
specific demand

A specific research and

development is
needed by engineers
and customer team

Then the CIT assesses

the improvement with
representatives of all
functions
(manufacturing,
quality control,
marketing) and keep
on innovating

Thus, each unit can

test and implement an
innovation
independently. Once
the benefit is proved,
the innovation can be
replicated

Q2 (contd.) Top-down option

Senior management decides to implement a new process. In

order to convince every plants, the process is established at
Clinton and Nypro senior management hope proving its
performance in that way! The examples can be as follows:
Very precise molds for
contact lenses
(Vistakon) and creation
of joint continuous
improvement teams.

Bi-component molding
for a toothbrush
(Johnson & Johnson
dental care division)

Visual Factory and

clean parts molding
(Warren Brooks teams,
Clinton plant)

Manufacturing resource
planning ( software
which gather
information and make it
available for the client
as well as Nypro. (topdown)

Choice of Customer
Nypros customers were Global companies with worldwide sourcing
needs
Plants were tailored to the markets and companies they served.
Key emphasis in Uniformity: Nypros 21 plants were identical with
20 to 24 Nestal molding machines in dust free clean rooms.
Uniformity precludes innovation at each individual plans.

Encouraging innovation along with disseminating it.

Q4: How should Lankton deploy the

Novaplast technology across the
company?
Options:

1. Build a new plant with Novaplast machines whose sole business

would be to pursue the sort of high-variety, low-volume-per-part
business for which the machine was designed
2. Install two or three Novaplast machines in each plant in the Nypro
system. Assign several engineers and salespeople to work on the
job of figuring out how the machine could be exploited most
profitably
3. Assigning one plant to build a business around the Novaplast and
then to learn from that plants experience to roll out the machine
across the company

Comparing Options
Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

Strengths:

Strengths:

Strengths:

Close-to-customer
manufacturing particularly
important in the market
segment

Could be implemented rather

quickly

Most popular with senior

management
Engineering efficiency
Centralizing development
would facilitate personal
oversight of project
Quick execution
Weaknesses:
Transportation costs
Against current philosophy
of being decentralized
No successful experience

Allows for the potential to

capture more market share
Puts more engineers and
marketers to work on exploiting
the NovaPlast

Allow for
engineering/efficiency to be
gathered
Could evaluate how resource
planning systems interoperate

Better technology would emerge

Use internal market for

innovation

Weaknesses:

Weaknesses:

Against economy of scale

philosophy

Time consuming to deploy if

research shows that the
flexibility is required in other
international markets

Unproven technology and no

clear indication of its feasibility

Recommendation
The recommendation would be to go for a partial option #2, of installing two or three
Novaplast machines in a few of the most innovative plants

This is to ensure that consistency is not lost across plants due to innovation

The roll out has to be done almost immediately as they need to quote shorter
delivery times to capture market and do away with time involved in non-value added
activities such as changing molds, etc.

If successful then the new machines can be rolled out to the other plants