Johnson A/S Executive Summary

Executive Summary:

RESON A/S is a company that specializes in underwater acoustics and high power ultrasonic. In the beginning of 1990’s, the company faced a managerial challenge wherein they needed to rethink how to manage the development of new products, but, with a target to reduce the development time from 3 years to 3 months. During that time, the company gained new customers and they had to be served quickly and effectively by applying their proprietary technologies in innovative ways. RESON chose two ways to mange its development projects- 1) opening up the organization which would create a responsive and open working environment; 2) by providing unlimited trust and financial resources to the project manager making themselves accountable

The company later started manufacturing main components for underwater measurement systems, like sensors, in Denmark and their only customer base was the defense industry. In 1980’s, in order to move to other specialized markets, RESON modified its 100% family owned business to a corporation, which as a result, investors with the knowledge of high-tech business bought 49% of the company’s shares. Further, to reduce its dependence on the defense industry, it approached new markets by strengthening its competence in electronics and establishing a permanent office in USA, California. Later in 1990’s, RESON set up another base in Aberdeen, Scotland which benefited the company because it is the center of the oil and gas business. Despite the growth and increase of new customers to the company’s portfolio, RESON was facing a new challenge – how to serve the new customer needs quickly and effectively with their existing technologies. With that, it became clear to the management of RESON that the company needed to revise its approach to new product development and needed to rethink the way they managed their R&D projects. Though they had high growth potential using their technologies in innovative ways; to capitalize on that potential, RESON had to reduce the development phase to 3 months from 3 years. For this, RESON emphasized the quick application of existing technologies. That

Key elements in RESON’s approach to project management:

RESON’s shared philosophy and key elements in their new approach to project management were the following 6 objectives:

- Profit: Profitability is the most important factor that everyone needs to understand and actively contribute to the operations. This gives freedom to everybody to plan their work most effectively.

- Customers: The customers should be heard and their problems understood so as to find innovative solutions and functional boundaries within the company have to be crossed to fulfil the customer needs.

- Markets: Understanding the dynamics of the global markets is essential to quickly respond to sudden changes in the environment or the customers