Labels and Packaging Innovation Asia • 6 2021 -
22
Long-term innovation to customer happines Chief Technical Adviser to the CEO Zaki Ali and Senior Scientist Kevin Kidnie share what R&D means at Miraclon, why it matters, and how listening to – and even pre-empting – customers’ needs is key to staying ahead of the curve.
Zari Ali
Cutting a new course isn’t something that happens overnight. Take transforming flexo. Twelve years ago, our scientists invented a technology platform that set new standards for flexo printing. Since then they have continued to define the direction of future innovation. Unlike many technology companies, Miraclon’s R&D approach focuses on major developments rather than small, incremental gains. Why do you feel that’s a better way to work? ZAKI ALI: At Miraclon, we know true innovation lies in addressing fundamental challenges, not quick fixes. We’re not interested in making ‘me too’ products. We want to be providing the products that our customers need and our competitors can’t provide. Making lots of small improvements impacts efficiency, and often ends up causing problems which you then have to go back and fix. That’s just not an efficient way to work.
Kevin Kidnie
KEVIN KIDNIE: What we’ve found is that once a product is on the market, making constant tweaks is inefficient – not only for us, but for our customers too. We prefer to bring out finished products that we know can do the job. We work really hard to involve the customer throughout the R&D process, but we also involve other teams like marketing, manufacturing and the tech application group to determine what areas we should be working on. “We want to be providing the products that our customers need and our competitors can’t provide. Making lots of small improvements impacts efficiency, and ends up causing problems which you have to go back and fix. That’s just not an efficient way to work.” There must be many technologies and products which show promise. How do you identify which areas to focus on?
ZAKI ALI: In R&D, it starts with making sure our research is aligned with the company’s goals, which all hinge around transforming flexo. Assets and resources are valuable, so we need to focus on the ideas that have the most promise – both for the company and our customers. The next step is assessing the opportunities. There are all kinds of factors we use for that: market potential, development time, how it fits in with our other core technologies, the overall complexity of the project. Many parts of the company are involved in those decisions – not just R&D, but everyone from manufacturing to marketing. KEVIN KIDNIE: Sometimes it’s about solving a problem. Other times it’s simply because you see potential in something. I spend most of my time working in a lab at quite a small scale, and sometimes I see something that looks different or interesting, and start to wonder what could we do with that? This is actually what led to the launch of the KODAK FLEXCEL NX
