KavoKerr – Client Interview

VP, NPD of Dental Professional Consumables

KaVo Kerr manages a portfolio of active projects, but also has a portfolio strategy for projects 3-5 years out.  This helps them overcome one of the biggest challenges in portfolio management – prioritization.  Discover how having a visible roadmap helps KaVo Kerr strategically manage its portfolio of new product, technologies and acquisition ideas.

The 3 C`s of Portfolio Management and How They Impact Successful Project Selection & Prioritization Outcomes 

Stage-Gate International interviews Georgette Belair, VP, NPD of Dental Professional Consumables from KaVo Kerr

Georgette Belair, Vice President, KaVo Kerr New Product Development; brings over 20 years’ experience in Engineering, Manufacturing, and R&D. Her roles have included instilling Operation Excellence at Pilkington North America, and Design Excellence at Ethicon Endo-Surgery, a Johnson & Johnson company. She most recently led the effort to instill project and portfolio management at CareFusion Corporation in San Diego and built a team nearly from scratch at Ossur Orthopaedic Bracing R&D.

Recognized as a thought leader in the Six Sigma and Medical Device R&D fields, she is a published author, of Implementing Design for Six Sigma, A Leader’s Guide.

Georgette holds a Bachelors Degree of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University, Flint, Michigan, and Masters of Business from the University of Toledo, Ohio.

SGI: Let’s start by telling our readers a little about yourself and your company.

GB: Hi, my name is Georgette Belair and I am the VP of Product Development for the KaVo Kerr Group, specializing in dental equipment and consumables and a platform for the Danaher group of companies which is a multi-billion dollar company. My background is a mechanical engineer with a Masters in Business. I have been in the medical devices industry for over 10 years now and have had the opportunity to work in the following roles and industries: automotive, research and development, manufacturing and operational six sigma for nearly 25 years. When it comes to my experience with Stage-Gate®, I started in the mid 90’s by picking up a book and implementing the Stage-Gate process with a two billion dollar firm and have used it with every team that I have led since. When I began working with medical devices in the early 2000’s we began with solid and robust voice-of-customer and Stage-Gate principles.

SGI: What is your favorite new product out right now and why?

GB: My favorite new product out there today is the ReWalk exoskeleton that I saw at an orthopaedic show. This technology is able to help countless paraplegics be able to walk again. They put on this wearable motorized brace on an individual and with the help of computers and motion sensors it gives people with paralysis or degenerative problems the opportunity to walk again along with independence. It is amazing and emotional to see someone who has not been able to walk for 10 years or even their entire life take their first steps again. Words truly cannot describe this feeling.

SGI: In your opinion, what is the single biggest portfolio management challenge that organizations face today?

GB: It has been my experience in every R&D organization that I have seen so far, that the biggest portfolio management challenge is prioritizing. Prioritizing, prioritizing, and prioritizing! If you think about the portfolio of any product line in the world, there is always an active portfolio that keeps the project teams over 100% busy. Inevitably there will always be some new, great idea that will find its way to the already saturated product portfolio. It is nearly impossible to just “squeeze” in another project without impacting the others, so the ability to prioritize both on the fly and in a rationalized time frame can be very difficult for businesses. It becomes an even more difficult decision when you hear, “if I just did this, I could make us another X amount of dollars”. If you take on that extra project how does that impact the already active ones?

SGI: What advice would you give to others on how to tackle this challenge?

GB: My advice on tackling this challenge is to always have a complete portfolio funnel not just for the active projects, but also having a portfolio strategy for 3-5 years out. As a company, when we get a new technology or acquisition idea, we can always insert it into the business strategy and our long term portfolio funnel. Every product idea has a place in the funnel. When you have a fully visible strategy or a roadmap, when a new idea is added to the portfolio we can easily find it and decide if “it has real estate” or if the roadmap has to adjust accordingly.

By having an active and visible project portfolio we are aware that we cannot do every project. For projects that are within our technology realm, we know our active projects today, we know what our engineers and scientists will be working on tomorrow and we also know when a project rolls off. We do exactly the same for long term unknowns, the projects that we want to do research on – that fuzzy front end – we have a full technology funnel there as well, so, that we can always be feeding that active, known technology project roadmap.

SGI: What do you think Summit attendees would be most interested to know/learn about your upcoming Summit presentation?

GB: l think what people will be most interested to know is how to use as many known criteria to help prioritize a portfolio program. Often times portfolio programs are created by the marketing leads, but, companies should not forget to include other functions of the organization for product ideas, cost improvements, manufacturing structure for example. If we don’t tap into these functions we might miss out on new technologies that could solve an unmet need or an opportunity to enter a new industry. By using certain weighted criteria we are able to get better answers to: what will generate the most sales, what will generate the most follow-on product, what will generate the most IP technology landscape, what could generate the most goodwill. We use such criteria to make a strong rationalized product portfolio map that is fully holistic and not just what is going to make us money tomorrow.

SGI: Looking into your crystal ball what do you think will be the greatest challenge facing product portfolio managers 10 years down the road?

GB: I think one of the biggest barriers we will have is the absolute need to reduce the project cycle time. Especially in the medical devices industry, where the project cycle time tends to be fairly long compared to other industries such as consumer goods like cell phones. Ultimately, we cannot afford to have long cycle times, our industry needs to find a way to decrease development time to compare to industries like consumer products; or to similar companies around the world that may have many- times the resources dedicated to development. The solution just might be to utilize the around the world skill sets that we have in order to speed up the process and development time. First, we will have to somehow figure out how we can break down those barriers so we can launch new products as quickly as consumers see new products.