Case Study: Corning

Corning began a disciplined, company-wide roadmapping effort in the mid 1990s. While roadmaps proved to be successful, the company soon realized that software applications like PowerPoint and Excel were simply insufficient for its roadmapping needs. Corning needed a single system—designed specifically for roadmapping—to dynamically connect product and technology planning across the company.

Today, Alignent's software literally touches every Corning business unit—across R&D, product engineers, sales, marketing, manufacturing and strategic planning. With a single, collaborative system for roadmapping Corning can now visualize, communicate and optimize future product and technology directions and easily align them to overall business strategies.

"With Alignent, we have seen a dramatic increase in our ability to accurately predict how changes will unfold, link important market, technology and product data, and quickly respond to competitive changes."

Bruce Kirk
Director of Corporate Innovation Process
Corning

The Challenge

Roadmapping had already been in use at Corning a few years before the company realized that it needed a more robust, enterprise-wide solution. While highly effective for planning and forecasting, Corning's roadmaps were being created by different cross-functional groups for different functions using Microsoft Office applications such as PowerPoint and Excel.

The company's planning experts were seeing flaws in their roadmapping process. For example, some of the product design specifications that appeared to be perfectly matched for a particular customer were failing to align with broader market needs. In addition, some products were late to market due to development delays from insufficient communication and insufficient insight into technology lifecycles. Lastly, some R&D projects were not being effectively integrated into final products.

Corning needed a single, company-wide system that could bring collaboration to its cross-functional groups and complement its existing roadmapping process while also providing:

  • A better understanding of customer needs in the context of rapidly changing markets
  • Stronger alignment between R&D and functional business units
  • Improved time to market

The Solution

After a successful pilot of Alignent's Vision Strategist, a selection task force decided to adopt the platform and roll it out to additional business units. Vision Strategist's common format, scalable database and ability to prioritize roadmaps were all factors in the company's decision to adopt the product on a wider scale.

Today, Vision Strategist is most widely used in the Display Technologies business segment, with prominent involvement in the Telecom business units, the Specialty Materials Group and Environmental businesses. Altogether, Vision Strategist has touch points in every Corning business unit—across R&D, product engineers, sales, marketing, manufacturing and strategic planning.

Corning's product line managers rely on Alignent to forecast performance attributes over time, and to see when required technologies are needed. The R&D team uses the software for advanced warning of product requirements, allowing sufficient time to develop processes to implement new technologies. Core technology managers use Vision Strategist to anticipate future needs and devise solutions to solve those needs.

"We are now able to forecast 3-5 years into the future, as opposed to the one year that was forecasted historically," explained Bruce Kirk, Director of Corporate Innovation Process, Corning. "We now have a smooth new product development process, that's highly collaborative, and ensures fewer surprises."

In the first 12-18 months, the organization saw tangible results, most notably in the R&D handoff to business units. Before Vision Strategist, the information being shared between business units and R&D was insufficient, resulting in delays to market and missed opportunities. After Vision Strategist, process owners have more pre-handoff insight into new product performance attributes, resulting in improved time-to-market.

As soon as new information is inserted into a roadmap, all stakeholders across the company see the ripple effect up to two years away.

Bruce Kirk
Director of Corporate Innovation Process
Corning

Other major gains include the ability to link markets with product performance and technology capability, a way to demonstrate ROI on all R&D investments, and the ability to see which short- and long-term opportunities are most aligned with corporate goals.

The Value

In the first 18 months, Corning recognized such benefits as:

  • Product forecasting range extended from 1 year to 3-5 years
  • Accelerated time-to-market through minimization of disconnect between R&D and business units
  • Extended visibility into ripple impact from one year to two years when roadmaps are updated with new information
  • Enhanced alignment between project selection and corporate goals through better differentiation between near-term opportunities and long-term opportunities