Community Forum – Uncovering Systemic Risk

What have you done to uncover systemic risk in your R&D operations?

Uncovering elements of Systemic Risk can be critical in many areas of business, but maybe none moreso than in laboratory data acquisition. Data quality and integrity is an underpinning of R&D. We are beginning a study of systemic risk in our key instrumentation using a Failure Mode Effects Analysis approach. This is aimed at uncovering the most dangerous causes of systemic risk in our various analyses and looking for corrective actions that can minimize the possibility that one of these problems will pop up and/or their negative impact. I’m interested in learning more about what other IRI member companies have done to uncover systemic risk in their R&D operations-other methodologies or commentary on “effort/payback”. – Sherri Bassner, Intertek USA

Community Response

Anne Shim, Director of Research & Development, Avery Dennison​
Good question: there are multiple aspects.
1) Project related risks. As part of a stage gate approach we do a design fmea, that helps to get focus on the right issues through risk mitigation
2) Data validity, this is a more underlying issue. We are utilizing Gauge RandR to understand standard deviations and test discrepency. We also do round robin testing
3) Competitive risks – especially from parallel technologies. Though somewhat of a blind spot I try to get attention on this in our stage gate meetings causing people to take a second look
4) Business risk. Assessed throughout the stage gate but especially in the early phases. Critical question is ‘what is our sustainable competitive advantage’.

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