The Product Innovation Process
The Product Innovation Process has three major elements:
- Product Management – addressing the strategic aspects of the process.
- Voice of the Customer – ensuring development of what the customers want.
- The Gateway process – ensuring development projects are carried out in a structured and efficient way.
Listening to customers ensures consideration of their sustainability expectations when developing new products. This applies to both development and manufacturing of the products and how the products perform in serving the customers.
The Gateway process provides a mechanism to ensure that all relevant sustainability issues are addressed and documented. For example, all environmental, health and safety issues should have been identified, checked and dealt with before continuing from the product and process design step in the Product Innovation Process.
Reduced use of chemicals, energy consumed and material needed to fulfill security, safety and convenience requirements, are all steps in the implementation of the Group's sustainability strategy. The Group has reused and recycled its products and manufacturing for many years already and intend to keep improving in this area.