Every product company has a story–one that makes you cringe just thinking about it–where something went wrong…really, really wrong. A situation that could have been avoided if only….
At Arena we hear these stories all the time. They wrench our gut and remind us of the days when we worked in manufacturing.
We’ve taken these stories, yours and ours, changed the names, products and companies to protect the innocent, and retold them. The first one is posted in the new Arena Dispatches section of our website. It’s called Up in Smoke: The 3 things you need to know about managing product change.
Up in Smoke tells the story of a toy manufacturer trying to understand how its blockbuster franchise could literally go down in flames at the height of its popularity. It’s a cautionary tale about the perils of relying on spreadsheets and manual processes to manage bills of materials (BOMs), engineering change orders (ECOs) and the new product development (NPD) process.
Though it may bring back a painful memory or two, it’s also a quick, easy read, so check it out!
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