As you may have read in my Tweets recently, October 23 was the New Technologies Group away day.
We visited a nature reserve and spent the day helping the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and the North Carr Conservation Group with maintenance of the reserve.

It was a day of extremely tough manual labour – its hard to dig up the roots of invasive pond plants when your movement is restricted by being waist deep in mud – but it felt good to have achieved something worthwhile.
It will be good to return to the site next summer to see how the rare, indigenous wildlife has flourished as a result of our work.

Here is a newsletter we have received from The NCCG about the day.

Edd

For those of you who follow me on Twitter ( @discoverRB -Edd), I’ve decided to write a blog post. This should give you a bit more insight into my job and what I’ve actually been up to recently, as it’s difficult to say much with only 140 characters.

I have two main projects that I have been focussing on since late spring; they are both looking at ways to improve Airwick devices.

The first of them aims to improve the performance of a device that is already on the market, so that we can put more claims on the packaging of the device. This will be what we call a silent change; where the external appearance of the device will not change, but it will perform better than what our customers have become used to.

These projects are often very challenging as you are greatly restricted in the ways that the device can be improved. I often find myself thinking, if only I could change the refill design or if I could make the device bigger it would make it much easier to improve the internal workings of the device. You have to put these ideas to one side and focus on how to achieve the project brief whilst maintaining the fixed features. The biggest challenge usually comes down to finding ways to keep any improvements ‘cost neutral’ i.e. if you want to add something that is more expensive then you have to offset that cost in some way.

In this project one of the ways that I have kept costs neutral is to vary the amounts of plastics used for different components of the device. Some parts have to be made of a material with specific properties (strength, heat resistance, flexibility etc). I identified ways to reduce the size of expensive parts, whilst maintaining their functionality, to free cost to be allocated to larger cheaper parts that would improve performance.

Early in the project we used computer modelling techniques, such as Finite Element Method, to improve our understanding of the functionality of the devices. We then used this to predict ways to improve the device. These ideas were drawn up as CAD (Computer Aided Design) models which could be produced as ‘Rapid Prototypes’. This is an impressive process called ‘Stereo Lithography’ (SLA) that uses lasers to solidify a liquid to produce accurate reproductions of a design. The SLA models were run as normal air fresheners and the best one was selected for further work.

We used the findings from the various designs to improve the design of the best one. This was then produced in the correct materials. This is an important step as the SLA resin is likely to perform differently to plastics. It is also an expensive step as tooling for injection moulding can costs tens of thousands of pounds per component.

Unfortunately the injection moulded devices did not perform as well as the target set in the project brief. To save the cost of producing new CAD designs and new injection moulding tooling we decided to modify the devices by hand. With a lot of help from my placement student, we used a Dremel Multi tool and various glues to modify the components of the devices; reshaping and resizing them. We tested these hybrid devices and kept modifying the best design from each test and I’m pleased to say that we now have a design that far exceeds the project requirements.

Large numbers of the devices have now been placed on test to produce a robust dataset. If they continue to perform well then the findings of my project will be given to the Aircare team and they will use them to improve the devices on the market within the next 12 months.

The second project is similar but poses very different challenges. It also has the aim of producing a high performance air freshener, but this one must be better than anything currently on the market. It’s a big ask, but it’s made easier by the fact that I am allowed to create a brand new device from scratch. I really like this project as I really get to ‘think outside the box’. I don’t have to use any of the technologies previously used in air freshening. I can learn from what has gone before, and often the learning is that things have not been done very effectively in the past because cost and environmental issues have been less important.

While at the end of the day this device will look much like other Airwick devices, so that it is clearly identifiable on shelf as an RB product, the internal workings will be unlike anything that has gone before. This project is at a very early stage. I have theories of how the device should work and what technologies will be required, but no working prototypes yet.

I’ve briefed an agency to help in finding technologies that can perform the required functions. Hopefully they will provide us with a promising list of approaches. We also have an internal team whose role mainly revolves around discovering new technologies as they arise, from universities, research institutions and companies. I have some great components already from Japan and America and have had two very fancy testing rigs produced to experiment with them. The results look impressive so far.

This project will be much more long-term than the first, with the device probably not being on the market until 2014. I will complete my section of the work and hand the project to the Aircare team some time next year.

Edd

I’d like to draw your attention to the Reckitt Benckiser Decision Making Challenge: a competition to win $5000.

All you have to do is show us your innovative skills by making a 2 minute video to explain what you would invent to make life easier at a music festival.
So far we’ve had a suggestion of a suncream glove and a “loo lifesaver” (it has an odour neutralising spray and some wet wipes to help you survive the not so sanitary toilets!)

But can you do better?

To find out more and to enter the competition visit our Facebook page where there is a video detailing exactly what you need to do.

And as someone who works in research and development here at Reckitt Benckiser, I thought I would share some tips on inventing a market-breaking new product.

   • Solve a problem -  Try to understand what the main unsolved problems are that people have. An invention you come up with   can sound great, but if it doesn’t solve a real problem then people won’t buy it.

   • Think ’simplicity’ - Overly complicated routes to a solution can often be improved if you step back and think what aspects are unnecessary.

   • Stand on the shoulders of giants - You don’t always have to invent something from scratch. Sometimes all you need to do is spot how you can improve on someone else’s invention.

   • Think about cost - Your consumer – in this case festival goers – will always want to pay the minimum possible and will not buy an expensive product unless it solves a very irritating problem!

Good luck. I’m looking forward to watching your videos.

P.S. Look out for my next blog, when I’ll introduce Olivia from the Decision Making Challenge video as a guest blogger.

And, of course, remember to follow me on Twitter at DiscoverRB

Discover RB

Hi I’m Edd, aka Edd_at_RB on Twitter. This is my first blog for MyRBOportunity.com because I’m usually Tweeting. Hopefully I can tempt some of you to follow me on Twitter.

I’ve been tweeting since mid-May, gradually finding the balance between writing worthwhile, informative tweets and giving away sensitive information! I am trying to make sure people get an idea of what my job is like and to give followers a chance to see what others at RB are getting up to: For example the guys that went trekking in the Himalayas to raise money for Save the Children on RB’s Global Challenge last month.

I find it interesting that quite a few independent marketers and PR professionals have commented about Reckitt Benckiser’s use of Twitter to raise awareness of the brand as an employer. Recruitment Views had a few ideas on how we could improve our approach, but overall said we offer ‘a good package’; Rick at The Grumpy Old Manager’s Guide to Social Media was really positive and Evans Media Group definitely think that Twitter is the way forward for businesses, but aren’t sure if we’re doing it properly yet. . . Some of their points had already been addressed, others are being resolved.

This subject has drawn comments from 22 people on the business networking site LinkedIn, and the general consensus seems to be that Twitter is something we should be doing – but doing well. I’ll try my best to make sure it is done well. One use of Twitter that a lot of people particularly disagree with is ‘ghost writing’; where multiple people contribute to a feed, whilst trying to maintain a singular image. One blog writer likened it to: “Pretending to have played a wonderful guitar solo on a classic song when you have not!”

 Well, I can confirm that Reckitt Benckiser doesn’t do ghost writing.
I am currently the only person who writes on the RB Twitter feed: I am Edd_at_RB.

Click on the link to follow me . . .