Rapid developments in the pump industry

The pumps industry is not renowned for its speed of innovation. A straw poll of industrial pump manufacturers conducted in mid 2012 indicated that typical development timescales range from three to five years.

These timescales have not changed significantly over the last 15 to 20 years. Pumps are much less complex compared with other mechanical engineering products such as cars or aircraft, yet new models are introduced at a slower rate.

Additionally, driven by more demanding customers, competitive intensity, regulatory pressures and technical development, development timescales in parts of the mechanical engineering industry are reducing.

Are there any lessons that pump manufacturers can learn from other industries…

For cars, times to develop new auto platforms have reduced by over one third since the mid 1990s with additional savings projected for the future.

Are there any lessons that pump manufacturers can learn from other industries and their approach to product development?

Some pump specialists would perhaps argue that, as critical components, there is an inherent conservatism among end users to major changes in the pump technology they use.

Operators of, for example, a chemical plant cannot afford the commercial, legal and environmental consequences of moving to a new pump product that has not undergone rigorous testing and field evaluation.

However, the same argument applies to car or aircraft manufacturers as the Ford Pinto scandal of the 1970s or the de Havilland Comet disasters of the early 1950s testify. Yet this has not stopped their respective industries cutting significantly development times.

New product development in the pump industry traditionally has been a sequential process- also known as “waterfall development”. This involves working up a full specification of requirements based upon internal discussions, review of competitor products and contact with the market place.

Only when this stage is complete or near complete, does the design stage commence. This is followed by implementation, verification and testing stages.

An alternative approach is the concept of iterative development. Known also by the term concurrent “engineering”, this is something of a misnomer since it applies not just to the engineering of the product, but to all of the disciplines involved including sourcing, manufacturing, marketing and sales.

The idea is that disciplines operate in parallel, each moving through a continuous process of planning, analysis, testing, evaluation and implementation, operating on an iterative basis until the desired outcome is achieved.

For example, many of the elements of concurrent engineering were applied to the development of a new ISO chemical process pump launched at ACHEMA 2012, the major process industry exhibition.

As a result, “time to market” was cut by around 30% compared to the launch of the previous chemical process pump which had less than half the number of sizes.

The advantage of concurrent engineering is that it enables modifications to be incorporated as the process continues whilst minimising delays. These modifications might arise, for example, if testing has highlighted performance issues that need to be addressed.

Using a sequential product development process would involve significant additional delays since these changes could involve elements of redesign. Its use could ultimately accelerate product development in the pumps industry.