Life Cycle Management Workshop 2

Auckland - 3rd July 08

The Life Cycle Thinking series continued with the second workshop on Life Cycle Management held at Unitec's Mt. Albert campus in Auckland. This event drew a crowd of around forty participants, the vast majority having attended the first workshop in Auckland with a few determined pioneers flying up from Wellington and Christchurch for the day.

The 'management' focus was a natural extension from the product-based focus of the previous event, and it was with a recap of the Life Cycle Thinking workshop that the day began. Cris de Groot reminded participants of the 'Design Mindset' introduced through the first event, and in particular of the conceptual shift from object-oriented designing to systems-oriented designing.

Jake McLaren and Timothy Allan followed with an introduction to applying life cycle thinking to the development and management of products and services. Jake presented the theoretical background of LCM and discussed its application in the development strategy of electronics giant, Nokia. This included an outline of the company's vision, goals and implemented systems and policies. Timothy spoke on the practical application of LCM into organisations, using the 'Plan, Do, Check, Act' concept to illustrate the continual improvement and growth available to the company.

Participants were split into groups in order to develop a vision and policy statement for their given companies. They were then asked to define the key strategic areas of the business and assess its current performance against these to outline areas for development or improvement.

Penny Nelson provided a short overview of the Landcare Research initiative that is looking to integrate LCM into the manufacturing sector of New Zealand. This was followed by case study sessions presented by Jake McLaren on the use of LCM at Formway; Blythe Rees-Jones on the innovative business model implemented by outdoor clothing manufacturer Patagonia; and a collaborative effort by Timothy Allan and PWP CEO Tony Clifford on the integrated sustainability practiced by PanPac Forest Products throughout the whole organisation.

The afternoon group workshops focused on prioritising the key strategic areas from the businesses analysed in the morning session before defining a range of objectives for these. Tasks were then outlined for these objectives to provide a strategy to deliver on the environmental policy for each business. The worksheets described the approach to realising Life Cycle Thinking in product development at a management level.