time to market is crucial (future by semcon #1 2012)

1 ULTRA FOG PUTTING OUT FIRES WITH MIST

1 SHORTEST TIME TO MARKET WINS THE PRIZE

1 THE WORLD’S MOST EFFICIENT ELECTRIC CAR – SMALL AND SAFE

Online customers are changing the world – Mike Walsh explains how

B SVERIGE PORTO BETALT PORT PAYÈFUTURESEMCON AB417 80 GÖTEBORG

future by semcon

#1 2012

CUSTOMER SOFTHE FUTUR E

AFTER WORK

PONTUS LINDBERG:

“Ironman has taught me to focus”About me“I like to work long-term with a clear focus on results and discipline, both at work and in my free time. At work, I work with pharmaceuti-cals at Semcon and in my free time I train and compete in what has been called the world’s toughest sport – the Ironman triathlon dis-tance. I am 35 years old and I live with my girl-friend and four bikes in Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm.” About my job“I have a Masters in Engineering, specialising in technical biology and have recently started a new assignment at AstraZeneca. Basically, it’s about developing tablets, making sure that the active substance is excreted in the right place in the body.”

About Ironman“I was looking for a physical challenge, and because Ironman is the hardest thing to do, I wanted to try it. When I noticed that I was good at it and that I continued to develop, it gave me more energy and focus to con-tinue.

In August 2011 I became the Swedish Ironman champion. It was a great feeling.

I started when I was 28, but I swam com-petitively when I was young, so I had some experience from before. Most of my com-petitors are full-time professionals who has been active in the sport since their teens, so of course I had some catching up to do. On the other hand, I continue to get better and better at the same time as many of my age have already peaked.

What I’ve learned from Ironman:“The great thing with Ironman is that it is so physically demanding. It inspires me to work towards long-term goals. My training has taught me to set challenging but realistic goals, to have staying power and be able to work towards a goal without losing focus. I see my job in the same way. “

FACTS: IRONMAN/TRIATHLONThe triathlon is an endurance sport com-prising swimming, cycling and running performed back-to-back. There are differ-ent distances but Ironman is the toughest variant, with its 3,860 metre swim, 180 km cycling and 42 km run.

name Pontus Lindberg what i do at work Civil engineer, technical biologyoffice Semcon, Stockholmwhat i do after work Triathlon, Swedish Ironman championcurrent challenge Getting into my new assignment at AstraZeneca

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A MAGAZINE ABOUT ENGINEERING SERVICES & PRODUCT INFORMATION # 1 2012

2 FUTURE BY SEMCON 1.2012

42 NEW ANTIBIOTICS THAT SAVE LIVESLytix Biopharma is on the way to solving one of today’s major medical problems – multi-resistant bacteria. Semcon is helping the company with its clinical trials.

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3

ANTIBIOTIKA MOT RESISTENTA BAKTERIER

Peptid LTX-109 fäster på cellmembranet.

Bakteriecellen sprängs sönder och dör. Denna sprängverkan går mycket snabbt. Cellen hinner inte försvara sig och bygga upp resistens.

Traditionell antibiotika verkar inifrån bakterie-cellen. Detta fungerar sämre eftersom cellen då får längre tid på sig att bygga upp en resistens.

47 FOG PUTS OUT FIRES MORE EFFECTIVELYUltra Fog’s sprinkler system with water fog is not just effective – it also reduces water damage. Semcon has helped with their development and documentation.

22 MEET SEMCON’S SHARPEST MINDSIn Semcon Brains you will meet Annsofi Nihlén, who knows how drugs react within the body, David Gillblom, who focuses on sustainability, and Kalle Mag-nusson, who co-designed the Volvo V60.

CONTENTS # 1.2012ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE OF FUTURE BY SEMCON

EDITORIAL

The race against time

P roduct development is moving faster and faster. In order not to fall behind the global competition, companies need to develop more products in less time,

products that are also becoming more complex. Time is playing an increasingly important role in this competition. Being first has become in-creasingly important in a world where custom-ers choose the most affordable and best prod-uct, regardless of where it originates.

AT SEMCON we have over 30 years’ experience of helping our customers with this challenge – to get the best product onto the market as quickly as possible. In this issue of Future you can read more about the importance of what is known as time to market and the methods that can help you win the race against the clock.

WE ARE ALSO proud in this issue to take you with us on assignments with companies such as Getinge, Gordon Murray Design, Lytix, Ultra Fog and Forsmark. Medical technology, vehicles, pharmaceuticals, fog sprinkler systems and nu-clear power. No challenge is too difficult for us.

ON 26 APRIL I hand over the baton to Markus Granlund, who will become Semcon’s new CEO. You can read more about him on page 51. Semcon’s nomination committee has proposed that I return to the post of Chairman of the Board. I would like to thank our customers and employees for four wonderfully exciting and eventful years as CEO and I look forward to fol-lowing the future development of both Semcon and our customers. 1

KJELL NILSSON – CEO, SEMCON

26 SMALL CAR, GREAT SAFETYGordon Murray Design has taken a revolutionary approach to automo-tive development with its T27 electric car. Along with Semcon, they have also made a small car very safe.

32 THE CONNECTED CONSUMER OF THE FUTUREYoung people today do not recognize a life without the internet. Consumer expert Mike Walsh travels the world to see how this phenomenon affects future consumption.

FUTURE BY SEMCON

IN YOUR IPADLook for “Semcon”

in App Store

FUTURE BY SEMCON 1.2012 3

Website: semcon.com Letters: Future by Semcon, Semcon AB, 417 80 Göteborg, Sweden. Change of address: [email protected] Publisher: Anders Atterling. Tel: +46 (0)70-447 28 19, e-mail: [email protected] Semcon project manager: Madeleine Andersson. Tel: +46 (0)76-569 83 31, e-mail: [email protected] Editorial production: Spoon. Editor: Katarina Misic. Designer: Mathias Lövström. Website: spoon.se Repro: Spoon Printing: Trydells Tryckeri, Laholm. Translation: Cannon Språkkonsult. ISSN: 1650-9072.


6 The product raceDeveloping good products is not enough with today’s global competition. You must also make sure you’re fast. Future looks at why time to market could be your most important challenge.


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PEOPLE #1.2012PEOPLE IN THIS ISSUE OF FUTURE BY SEMCON

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professor gordon murray, ceo and technical director, gmd, englandHow important is time to market for electric vehicles?“It is probably more important for electric vehicles than internal combustion engine vehicles because you have to settle on the battery technology and the power electronics system you are going to use, and these technologies are moving along at quite a rate. There is more pressure with battery electric vehicles to capture the current technol-ogy and get it out there.”

Getting products to market faster is becoming increasingly important. Meet some people in Future by Semcon speaking on the subject of time to market.

anders pettersson, global product manager, loading equipment, getinge infection control ab, getinge, sweden How important is it to be first with a product in the medical sector? “Our industry has long lead times and is less technology-intensive than the automotive industry, for example. It is controlled by regulations and it is difficult for new players to enter the market. Getinge is a leader in its field. When we produced our new SMART products, we could distance ourselves further from our competitors.”

annsofi nihlén, pharmacokineticist, semcon stockholm, sweden How can you help customers in the pharmaceutical sector to reduce their time to market?“A lot of it is about strategy. We keep advising our customers to use the right skills and make the right studies at the right time. Selecting the right patient group to test drugs on, and running multiple studies in parallel may also be ways to reduce time to market.”

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hedda wold, clinical testing manager and project manager, lytix

biopharma, oslo, norway How is the pharmaceutical sector

working to get products out faster?“Very good planning is the most important thing. For

small businesses it is important to purchase quality services from partners who we can trust. Electronic data

collection in clinical studies may provide an important advantage. On average, it saves between one and two

months per study, which could lead to a drug being launched six months earlier.”

david gillblom, sustainability and hmi engineer, semcon göteborg, sweden

More and more products are being produced faster – can you combine that trend with a perspective on sustainability?

“Right now I have to say no. In the future I am convinced that it will be possible. I hope so. But it depends on the product, the process

and energy. If the product is fully recyclable without losing quality during the process it is possible. We’re not there yet with

complex products – it’s still mostly a vision so far.”

kalle magnusson, vehicle designer, semcon göteborg, sweden Is it possible to streamline the design process with things like cars without losing creativity?“Yes, but you have to think of the design process as a giant machine. In order to be able to streamline it, you have to have very clear specifications from the client at the outset. Then it can move more quickly from concept to production.”

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FOCUS:TIME TO MARKET


THE FASTEST WINS

The race to get your products onto the market as quickly as possible has never been tougher. Fierce global competition for customers means that no one can afford to be slow. However, to become the fastest also means becoming the smartest. The right strategy to reduce the time to market is the key to success.TEXT PETER HAMMARBÄCK & KATARINA MISIC PHOTOS PAUL BRADBURY, MIELE, SCANIA, MANU FERNANDEZ, ISTOCKPHOTO & ROINE MAGNUSSON


1 JUNE 2006

After 26 years, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo had finally realised his dream. As of now, he was CEO of the world’s largest telecommunications company, Nokia. Then, the former rubber and paper

manufacturer posted a record profit of EUR 7.2 billion, and despite a smaller market share in the US, nothing looked like hampering the company’s continued dominance. Just a couple of years later, Nokia’s shares had plummeted by 66 per cent and its sales by 88 per cent.

The start of Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo’s nightmare could be traced back to one moment: 9 January 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s first iPhone with the words “today Apple is going reinvent the telephone”. In 2011, Apple overtook Nokia as the world’s largest manufacturer of smart phones (Nokia is still largest in terms of total mobile phone sales). The year before, the iPhone topped the sales charts in Nokia’s home market, Finland, a particularly painful setback for the Finnish national symbol.

In 2007, when Apple revealed its iPhone with its touchscreen, Nokia models still had 12-key keyboards. When Nokia introduced its touchscreen the following year, they still had menus designed for their old models. What took two or three steps to do on an iPhone took four or five steps to do on a Nokia.

IN 2008, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo realized that competition from the iPhone would not go away. Despite several experiments with new models, Nokia continued to lose market share, sales and credibility in the smartphone market. In September 2010 Kallasvuo was replaced by former Microsoft boss Stephen Elop, the company’s first non-Finnish CEO. He quickly scrapped Nokia’s Symbian operat-ing system and allied them with Microsoft and their Windows Phone operating system. The first Windows Phone model was pre-sented in late 2011.

It took Steve Jobs two and a half years to bring the iPhone onto the market in 2007. It took Nokia over four years to produce something

that could be considered a worthy competitor. Meanwhile, Nokia has lost a staggering EUR 60 billion in market value since 2007. Whether the collaboration with Microsoft will finally reverse Nokia’s decline remains to be seen.

“The market is changing. The whole smart phone data transformation is a window that will last for one or two more years. Then the market will be saturated. The question is: can Nokia and Microsoft come up with relevant phones fast enough?” says Pal Zarandy of the Finnish strategy company Rewheel to the New York Times.

The key word for both Nokia’s failure and the company’s potential comeback is speed. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo did not succeed quickly enough and with the right products in re-sponding to Apple’s revolutionary telephone, and when his replacement Stephen Elop took up the reins in 2010, the focus was on bringing new models onto the market faster, through an

alliance with Microsoft, in order to make the window mentioned above by Pal Zarandy.

“By using Microsoft’s operating system, Nokia has trimmed its time to market for new handsets by two-thirds,” said Elop to the New York Times, in conjunction with the launch of its first Windows Phone model.

In a world where consumers are continually looking for the latest thing, a fast time to mar-ket is a high priority. No consumer who can afford it wants to buy last year’s mobile phone, car or even dishwasher. New models create at-tention, which will hopefully lead to important mass media coverage for the product. Neither does any company want to spend more money and time than necessary in developing and manufacturing their products. Whether it is about reducing time in the manufacturing pro-cess or in product development, ensuring that the product reaches the consumer and starts generating revenue is everything.

HOWEVER, this hasn’t always been the case. Thirty years ago, companies like Polaroid, Xerox, IBM and Ford could thrive on long de-velopment cycles, high stock levels and a high percentage of their products being remodelled. Capital and scale decided the winner. Now that the internet and globalization are part of every-one’s daily life, the way companies compete with each other has changed. Reaching the customer first with the right products at the

“The capacity to reach the market first – or to copy quickly – is essential.”

Dan Markowitz, time to market expert


What is time to market?Time to market (TTM) is defined as the time it takes from when a product concept is crea ted until it is available for sale. The short-er the time, the faster a company can make money on their product and hopefully take significant market share from competitors.

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lowest possible cost has become what separates the winners from the losers. The American time to market expert, Dan Markowitz, a resi-dent of Apple’s home state of California, says that the time from idea to finished pro duct is of paramount importance for a successful busi-ness in today’s fast moving economy:

“Time to market is crucial today. In a global economy, with immediate and freely-accessible communication, any company can copy another company’s ideas and products cheaply. The capacity to reach the market first – or to copy quickly – is essential.”

The importance of launching products quickly is highly dependent on the type of market in which the company operates. Anders Richtnér, head of research at the de-partment of business and management at the

Stockholm School of Economics, believes that time to market is most important for those companies who need to get more and more products onto the market, have low profit margins and also who invest a lot of capital in product development.

“These companies have to bring out their products very quickly. If you operate in a sec-tor like this, it is automatically difficult to make money,” he says.

Another key factor in the greater focus on time to market is the increasingly intense global competition.

“Today, large corporations are trying to create a global market. So they have to battle against many more competitors, as there are a lot of companies in the same market. Many manufacturing companies try to create a tem-

porary monopoly for a new product, but the window for this is getting smaller. It’s very difficult to achieve a temporary monopoly on a global level nowadays,” says Richtnér.

Achieving this coveted temporary mo-nopoly brings two advantages: a good chance of high sales initially, and the opportunity to charge a higher price for the product because no one else is offering the same thing. How-ever, again, the possibility of achieving such a monopoly has become increasingly difficult. A Dutchman buying a new flat screen TV is just as likely to buy a Korean LG as a domes-tic Philips. A Finn looking for a new phone might go for HTC’s new Sensation model from China, even though he grew up with Nokia telephones. And an American think-ing of buying a car could soon drive home an Indian Mahindra SUV, manufactured in Korea, instead of a Ford from Detroit. In Mafia circles they would call this a ‘lack of loyalty.’ In this context, we talk about customers’ ‘increasing sophistication’:

“Consumers have become more sophis-ticated, more demanding,” says Richtnér. They have more knowledge about what they are buying, they compare different products and know what is on its way out. Neither is it certain that a product that works well in Scandinavia will sell equally well in India. Companies have to look at volume on a global basis, while providing product diversity at a local level.

OF COURSE, the question everyone is strug-gling with is: how to get your products onto the market faster? The answer is complex and rooted in the importance of time to the par-ticular industry you work in. There are many methods, and the one you choose depends as much on the prospects for the industry you operate in as the objectives you pursue. However, when considering time to market, it is almost impossible not to start with Toyota and their Lean philosophy, which took them to the top of the automotive industry.

“I am a committed supporter of lean product development in order to cut time to

Nokia’s former CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, presents a new model at the telecoms trade show in Barcelona, on 12 February 2008, almost a year after the iPhone was launched. It will be 2011 before Nokia can exhibit, according to experts, a worthy competitor to the iPhone. By then Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo will no longer be with the company.

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With certain projects it is ex-tremely important that the product comes to market at

a particular time. Project manager Jo-hanna Grimmefält works on projects like this, currently for a large medical device company. The key to success is investing energy into planning the project and its production processes.

“By making it clear how a process should work, you can save a lot of time,” she says.

Her experience in implementing lean production has been gained through the many projects she has completed for various clients. Essentially it’s about good documentation and subsequently refining the methods that has shown to

be effective. This accurate documenta-tion makes it easy to identify what can be optimized.

“It takes both time and knowledge to write process descriptions, but you get a lot out of it. If there is documentation, other projects in the organization can use the same method and then obvi-ously a lot of time can be saved.”

For Johanna Grimmefält lean production is the answerPlanning and documentation are Johanna Grimmefält’s tools for managing time to market. By making processes leaner, she helps her clients bring their products to market quickly.TEXT JONAS FRANZÉN PHOTO NICKE JOHANSSON

THE SPECIALIST

Johanna GrimmefältTitle: Project ManagerOffice: Semcon, Göteborg, Sweden

It’s not just about documenting how it went, but also about how a process should proceed. Certain processes that should be clearly documented in ad-vance are the internal chains of approval. Even before the project starts, it has to be clear who will take the decisions and when they are to be made.

“The chains of approval don’t neces-sarily have to be short, but they should be fast,” she explains.

Another thing that is important to ensure you finish on time is to get the suppliers to deliver on time. There could, for example, be deliveries of machines and materials that are essential in order to start production. You can also use different methods here. One is to allow people at different levels of the company to have direct contact.

“If a senior manager phones and asks how things are going, this demonstrates the importance of the project. It has a guaranteed effect,” she says.

She is convinced that it pays to plan and document, just as a lack of planning can cause problems.

“Unless everyone working on the project, both internal and external, is in agreement about the process right up until the product is finished, the whole project is at risk. Lean has something for everyone.”1


market. Just look at Toyota: they have long been able to develop cars within three years, compared to five years for the Big Three car-makers in Detroit. For a complex product like a car, 40 per cent is a fantastic reduction in time to market,” says Dan Markowitz.

The Toyota “lean” concept is nothing new for most people with the slightest interest in the manufacturing industry. A short sum-mary of this Japanese production theory: find all errors immediately and eliminate every-thing in the production process that does not create value for end users.

“Many companies try to copy Toyota’s lean approach, but this often just ends up with a couple of nice PowerPoint pictures about working more effectively, and not much more. Toyota is absolutely outstanding and it still has an enormous advantage. They are lean in their whole way of thinking and being,” Richtnér says.

THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY has been forced to be innovative in finding ways to launch their products more quickly and cheaply, rang-ing from standard platforms used for several models and facelifts of existing models to ex-tend their lifetime, to previously unthinkable alliances where bitter rivals work together to develop costly new technologies. However, success is often determined before these measures are taken.

“Ultimately, vehicle manufacturers need to make decisions about which products to invest in, and then carry out those decisions. In the automotive industry there are so many possible development paths, so it is even more important to do the right things. It may sound simple, but it is difficult when you have a product that won’t come onto the market for three years. Then it mustn’t fail,” says Stefan Ohlsson, head of Automotive R&D at Semcon.

One company that has had to make a lot of decisions in a short time is Volvo Cars. Since the company was sold to the Chinese

company Geely in 2010, CEO Stefan Jacoby has had a lot to do. However, how things are really going for him and the company can’t be gauged by this year’s results. We won’t know until 2015.

“I think I can safely say that no car manufacturer in history has so dramatically changed its methods from one generation to another as we are doing now. With a new platform, new engines and new models, we will be a completely different company in about three or four years,” he said in an inter-view in Veckans Affärer.

The long product development times naturally provide considerable opportuni-ties to save time throughout the process. A report from the analysts Oliver Wyman shows that focus on reducing time to market has the greatest impact on stimulating performance within product development: reducing time to market has an impact of 25–50 per cent, compared to cutbacks in R&D at 14–30 per cent and reduced unit costs with an impact of 2–11 per cent.

If a car manufacturer decides to increase its range from 10 to 15 models, the question is: how to do it most effectively? One way is to do everything yourself and increase resources at every stage, which is a risky move in the automotive industry, as it is sensitive to economic conditions. Another way is to limit your own scope and let others do the work.

“Outsourcing development projects to partners such as Semcon has a much greater effect on both time to market and total cost than other measures, something that all the major car manufacturers have begun to realize. If we can reduce product development time by just a few months, this means big profits for our customers,” says Stefan Ohlsson.

An area where time to market will be criti-cal in the next few years is environmental technology. The fact that Toyota produced the first hybrid car, the Prius, gave them a

big advantage in the market, one that is still noticeable even though the car was launched in 1997. Whoever is first to take the next leap in areas such as electricity, hybrid and fuel efficiency will gain significant market share in an already competitive car market.

And it’s not just in the automotive indus-try that companies are competing to be first to market with new environmental technolo-gies. In the cleantech industry, time to market is also one of the most important challenges. Whoever manages to develop even cheaper and more energy-efficient solar panels, wind turbines, biofuels or hydropower will have a great head start on their competitors.

THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY’S capacity for inno-vation in terms of time to market is attracting covetous looks from several directions. Two quirky collaborations seen in recent years have been between the pharmaceutical manufac-turer AstraZeneca and Jaguar Land Rover, and between GlaxoSmithKline and McLaren. In both cases, the aim is for the pharmaceutical companies to learn from the automotive in-dustry’s speed of innovation and production.

The golden days of the pharmaceutical in-dustry, when big sellers like Losec and Lipitor brought huge profits, are over. Nowadays, the industry is struggling with expired patents, a lack of new big-selling products, increased competition from generic companies, and increased regulatory demands on new drugs. In this context, a mere 10 per cent of drugs tested on humans becoming revenue-gener-ating products is not good enough. Further-more, original concept to launch normally takes around 10–15 years.

“The automotive industry has been through a huge number of structural changes yet is still a hugely innovative sector and a growth industry in many countries and for many players. This is something that others can learn from,” Vivian Hunt of the consulting

“ For a complex product like a car, 40 per cent is a fantastic reduction in time to market.”

Dan Markowitz, time to market expert




company McKinsey told Reuters. According to Porsche Consulting, average

product development time in the automotive industry has fallen by 28 per cent in recent years, while in the pharmaceutical industry it has risen by 31 per cent over the same period.

“In terms of production costs, the auto-motive industry may be a model for other industries. The amount of high tech that is offered at affordable prices in today’s cars is remarkable,” Reto Hess of Credit Suisse Pri-vate Banking told Reuters.

AN INDUSTRY WITH completely different devel-opment cycles to the automotive and phar-maceutical industries is the fashion industry.

Again, there is a huge focus on getting their products onto the market quickly, but it’s a case of weeks rather than years. One example is the Spanish fashion chain Zara. The cliché about Spaniards having a ‘mañana mañana’ mentality feels far from the truth and unde-served when you hear about their production process: from the original sketch it only takes a couple of weeks until the garment is in the shops. This method is based largely on verti-cal integration – that is to say that Zara owns the entire production chain: from the design department, through factories, right up to the stores. Zara outsources less than many of its competitors in the fashion industry, resulting in shorter lead times.

The financial cost of keeping it all ‘in the family’ is, however, higher, not least because of higher labour costs in Zara’s factories in Europe compared with Asian outsourcers. But Zara’s calculations seem to indicate that it is worth it. The design department in A Coruña, consisting of 200 people, designs 40,000 garments each year, of which over 10,000 become physical items. This is far more than most competitors. Through the internal network, patterns are sent directly from the designer to the factory, which is often located nearby. Within days, the garments are put to-gether. Within two weeks they are hanging in the stores. Zara’s production process means that a garment is often discontinued when the


ways to improve time to market 8

A car worker in the Toyota factory, working according to Lean.

1 SIX SIGMAA methodology developed by

Motorola in the 1980s. Less focus on logistics than in Lean, more emphasis on statistics, measurement and leader-ship. About eliminating variation in processes for maximum efficiency. Very hierarchical.

2 “THE PLATFORM MODEL”It takes a long time to reinvent the

wheel before each product launch. Com-panies who find a platform from which to launch a range of products have a lot to gain. New flavours of carbonated water are one example. The bottle is the same, the content is 99 per cent the same, but with a new flavour and label it becomes a new product to market.

3 LEANDeveloped in the automotive

industry. Ford was an early adopter of assembly-line production, but today Lean is associated with Toyota. Involves eliminating everything in the produc-tion process not creating value for end users, and incorporating “just in time” deliveries..

4 PARTNERSHIPStrong partnerships with a shared

agenda are everything in development projects. A partner can contribute with skills that you don’t have in your own company or reinforce with more man-power in key areas and thus get the job done faster and with better quality.

There are many methods for getting products to market quickly. Future by Semcon has listed some of the most common.

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clothing giant would actually have been able to sell more of it. However, this same method leads to the fashion retailer coming out with new products all the time, leading to custom-ers returning to the shops more often.

“They have created a feeling of anticipation in their customers, who want to snap up new items before they sell out. It keeps sales high throughout the year, while keeping costly price reductions to a minimum,” the analyst Kris Miller told Bloomberg Business Week.

It’s hard to talk about the subject of time to market and not return to the example of Apple. Time and time again they have shown how a product can change an entire indus-try, whether we’re talking about computers, music, telephones, tablets or TV. Apple was never the first company in these markets, but once they decided the focus of their product, they were quick to develop it and leave com-petitors behind.

THIS SPEED HAS been achieved in several ways. Firstly, due to the clear leadership of for-mer CEO Steve Jobs. The story of how Apple developed the iPad is a prime example of this clarity. After having come across a Microsoft employee at several dinners, who bragged about how good their Windows tablet would be, Jobs decided to show what a tablet could really do. He gathered his team and gave them the instruction:

“I want to make a tablet, and it can’t have a keyboard or a stylus.”

Another key factor in Apple’s speed is their ability to link to resources outside of Apple, so-called ‘open innovation’. For example, the iPod was taken from concept to prototype in eight weeks and to finished product in six months thanks to engaging external resourc-es to develop both software and hardware. Instead, Apple focused on its core business: ergonomics, design and the ability to under-stand customers’ expectations.

Vertical integration, lean, open innova-tion, standardization and platforms, external development assistance – all of these methods help companies save both time and money. However, many industries and companies have also reached a certain plateau in their quest to improve time to market, having streamlined

for a long time. For these companies, product development has reached the same phase the 100 metres sprint. You can shave a hundredth here and there by coming out of the starting blocks a little faster, improving your finish, trying new shoes and clothing to reduce air resistance, and so on. But on the whole, there is not much to streamline. A few hundredths of a second each year are gained, but not much more. Then suddenly, a Usain Bolt comes along and finds ten hundredths in a perfect race.

IN RECENT YEARS, computer simulations have been responsible for a ‘Usian Bolt effect’ within product development. When compa-nies started to test their products virtually instead of physically it meant that time to

“My advice is to stop for a moment and clear up some other strategic issues, firstly: what are we competing with? Where will we become profitable?”

Anders Richtnér, Stockholm School of Economics


5 SIMULATIONDifferent types of computer

simulation facilitate and speed up the testing of new products or manufactur-ing systems. With simulation, you can understand early on how products and systems will behave in the real world and find errors that would otherwise have caused delays..

6 “OPEN INNOVATION”Apple’s Steve Jobs was a keen ad-

vocate of ‘stealing’ good ideas from oth-ers, or ‘open innovation’, as it is more po-litely termed. The concept was launched in 2003 and involves companies using external ideas, innovations and practices as well as internal ones, to achieve more effective technical development.

7 AGILE METHODSThe agile approach is used primar-

ily with software, and is a paradigm shift from the earlier ‘waterfall’ model. The agile approach has less emphasis on documentation and more focus on flexibility to achieve the best results.

8 “FOLLOW THE SUN”Companies with operations

around the globe can maximize the effectiveness of development projects through planning according to time zones. Example: a team programmer in Silicon Valley will work until 6 pm, and then turn the task over to a team in Bangalore, India, where it is 7:30 am.

Strain simulation on a mobile phone design. Steve Jobs presents a new iPod model.

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market could be cut significantly for many. More and more companies use things such as CAD and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) for design, and in a simulated environment to see how the products operate and function. CFD, which can analyze how products meet air currents, withstand cooling and chemical reactions, etc., is the latest big trend. When the summer Olympics were held in Beijing in 2008, for example, 89 per cent of all the swimming medallists wore a special swimsuit – the Speedo LZR Racer.

“When I dive into the water with the suit, I feel like a rocket,” the American swimming

star (sponsored by Speedo) Michael Phelps said at a press event. He won eight Olympic golds in the Speedo costume. CFD simulation had an important role in the development of the super-suit, which maybe after all was a bit too fast for its own good: after the Olympics it was banned by the International Swimming Federation as it was considered ’technologi-cal doping’.

A 2011 INVESTIGATION conducted by the Ab-erdeen Group shows that companies that use CFD simulations during product develop-ment reduce product development time by

28 per cent. Further-more, the study also finds that CFD users, to a greater extent than those not testing with CFD, produce products that meet quality standards, revenue requirements and cost requirements. The main reason is that design and functionality faults are detected in an earlier phase of product development.

CFD itself, however, is a relatively sophis-ticated form of simulation. Simpler types of simulations are also used, for example, by the German white goods manufacturer Miele. A few years ago, they started to test user behaviour with a 3D simulation called CAVE – “Computer Aided Virtual Environment”. They send a tester into a room with 3D pro-jections of a kitchen on the walls, and ask the tester to turn the oven on, for example, which does not actually yet exist physically – only on the product developer’s drawing board.

“The need for physical and relatively ex-pensive models is reduced drastically with the new technology, which of course saves time and money,” said Miele’s senior designer Andreas Enslin about the CAVE tests.

The next step within simulation may be that the much vaunted ‘cloud’ will lead to companies being able to start testing sooner. Today it can take a relatively long time to get started on simulation because of software, training and programming. With cloud com-puting, this time is likely to reduce.

“FASTER IS, ALMOST ALWAYS, BETTER. From decision making to business settlements to communication to product introduction, it is almost always speed that decides the com-petitive edge” is a frequently-published quote from GE’s legendary CEO Jack Welch. Getting products to market quickly is undoubtedly important for many companies, but there are other success factors, quality perhaps being the most important. Only focusing on time to market, and ignoring all other objectives, is not a wise strategy,” believes Anders Richtnér of the Stockholm School of Economics. He means that companies have to answer several ques-tions before even considering time to market.

“There is sometimes a lot of focus on method. You feel stressed because everything is moving faster. My advice is to stop for a mo-ment and clear up some other strategic issues, firstly: what are we competing with? Where will we become profitable? The basis of any successful business is understanding who your customers are and what their needs are.” 1


1 ZARABy owning the entire production chain –

vertical integration – and having designers, seam-stresses, logistics department and store personnel who always seem to be on the starting blocks, Zara garments are in the shop two weeks after the first sketch is finished.

2 PENGUIN BOOKSThe publisher Penguin wanted to speed up

its book publication. Producing a traditional book, from concept to shelf, often takes several years. With its e-book company Penguin Shorts, for novel-las and short stories, they can produce an e-book in about a month.

3 SCANIABy building their trucks from finished mod-

ules, which can be combined in many different ways, Scania can deliver unique products to all its customers in less time. Modularization simplifies

and minimizes the number of component var-iants without compromising customization and production efficiency.

4 MIELEWhite

goods manu-facturer Miele uses simula-tions to shorten time to market. By studying user behaviour in 3D environments they understand quicker what they have to change and do not need to create physical models to the same extent.

5 APPLEThe secretive company Apple’s develop-

ment model seems to be largely based on finding the skills needed for each individual project. They recognize when their own employees need help, and bring in any external expertise required to get the product finished on time. The first iPod was completed in six months because the company brought in outside help.

6 TOYOTAThe world’s largest automaker took Ford’s

“assembly-line” approach and refined it into what is now known as Lean or Toyota Production System. Some keys to how Toyota works: optimizing flows, minimizing waste in production and stopping the process the moment a fault is discovered in a product and fixing it.

companies that succeeded in reducing their time to market6


Simulation can help you to cal-culate the optimum design and placement for a wind turbine.

Or how turbine blades in a jet engine should be designed to be as effective as possible. Or how much noise a car

makes at different speeds and on different surfaces. And many other things. All this even before there is a physical product to look at and test.

“What you can calculate is really only limited by your imagination. Progress is

constantly being made and has gained momentum thanks to increased comput-ing power,” says Pontus Wettrell, head of Computer Aided Engineering at Semcon.

Reducing costs, improving the quality of the end product and bringing the

Pontus Wettrell saves time with simulationsSimulation and calculation do more than simply detecting problems at an early stage. They also helps you to test the right things and to visualize the product before it even exists. For Pontus Wettrell, simulation is a shortcut to a faster time to market.TEXT JONAS FRANZÉN PHOTO NICKE JOHANSSON

THE SPECIALIST

Pontus WettrellTitle: Head of CFD & MultiphysicsOffice: Semcon, Göteborg, Sweden

product to market as quickly as possible, are the main reasons why companies choose to make use of simulations and calculations when developing a new product. The goal is to detect potential problems early in the development process.

“By using calculations and simula-tions, you can find a great deal of the problems in the conceptual phase.”

Making as many changes as possible before starting to develop prototypes saves both money and time, as it requires fewer test items.

“However, there is no conflict between simulation and testing. The idea is that the methods should complement one another. With the help of a good simula-tion you can better determine what is to be tested and how it should be carried out. That way you can use prototypes and test items to confirm what you’ve previously worked out, instead of finding faults for the first time,” says Wettrell.

Historically, most companies have relied primarily on testing, but over time, more and more have increased the amount of calculations and simulations.

“Simulation can be used to make automatic optimizations and through this to make informed choices regarding the choice of different product features. This is becoming increasingly important as today’s products have more and more features.”

Another advantage is that it is not just the technicians involved who can see how a product works at an early stage.

“For example, market strategists can get a good idea of the product so that they can start their work. It means that the whole organization has a head start and the time it takes to develop a pro-duct can be made shorter,” he says. 1



The world-leading med-tech company Getinge wanted to develop a new range of trolleys within a year. There was only one opportunity to launch – at the most important

industry trade fair in Germany, and nothing could go wrong. To ensure having the products ready in time, Getinge chose

to outsource the entire assignment to Semcon.TEXT FLORENCE OPPENHEIM PHOTOS ANDERS DEROS & GETINGE

Fast roll-out

+


etinge is the world’s leading supplier of complete solutions for effective clean-ing, disinfection and sterilization in healthcare and life sciences. After many years of expansion, the Group consisted of small islands of companies, products and manufacturing facilities. Therefore, in 2009, management decided to review and restructure parts of its product range, and achieve economies of scale

with a smaller range of components in higher volumes.

Their Infection Control business area de-signs and manufactures autoclaves (sterilizing machines used for materials like plastic, glass and metal) and washer-disinfectors (which clean and disinfect surgical instruments, for example) for hospitals, clinics, the pharma-ceutical industry and laboratories. One of the areas they were starting to overhaul was peripherals for the advanced washing and sterilizing machines, primarily trolleys, where there were many different solutions and unique variations. Getinge also wanted to im-prove the design and make it more attractive.

“In this industry, the focus has tradition-ally been mostly on function, not so much on design,” says Anders Pettersson, global product manager for Loading Equipment at Getinge Infection Control AB.

THERE IS A MAJOR LAUNCH opportunity within the industry – the medical technology trade fair Medica in Germany in November each year. Getinge’s policy is to take part in the show every other year, and this is why the launch date was predetermined. The project had to take just under a year – for the design,

development and production of a completely new product range.

“Everyone agreed that it was an aggres-sive schedule,” says Anders Pettersson, then head of engineering at Getinge’s development department. “Missing the deadline for the project, which was named SMART, was not an option. Such a comprehensive project had to start immediately, in order to start paying off the development costs. We couldn’t afford to wait a further two years to launch.”

Getinge had a number of existing products, but began in principle with a clean sheet of paper. They established clearly defined re-quirements for the new product range, which was called SMART, after the project. The goal was to combine attractive design with a clearer ergonomic profile, better functionality and a modularized manufacturing system.

“Trolleys are work tools and we wanted a clear ergonomic profile. They should look ergonomic and easy to use. We also wanted to introduce a number of automated features to facilitate usage,” explains Pettersson.

In order to clarify project responsibilities, Getinge chose to outsource the entire assign-ment externally, not just in terms of resources but also location.

“With the demanding schedule, we were concerned that the new project could have interfered with other Getinge projects, if the work had been carried out in-house. We therefore chose to make this demarcation, and outsource the entire responsibility for devel-oping a finished product. It was a good way for us to avoid internal prioritization problems.”

THE ASSIGNMENT was divided into three parts: general administrative project management with responsibility for regulatory require-ments and documentation, product design and assembly and production. After careful evaluation Semcon was commissioned to lead and be responsible for design and the manu-facture of prototypes, and carry out the work at their own premises.

“We needed a partner who could develop new functions and produce the relevant soft-ware, adapt this to the new design and have access to expertise in several areas, so that the project could run without interruptions. Semcon showed great desire and they had the right people for the assignment,” states Pettersson.

In the initial phase there was a need for ex-pertise in mechanics and electronics. One of the mechanical engineers, Nils Bjerkås, took

“Missing the deadline was not an option. We couldn’t afford to wait a further two years to launch.”Anders Pettersson, global product manager for Loading Equipment,

Getinge Infection Control AB


G


Nils BjerkåsTitle: Head of Mechanical Design group Office: Semcon, Göteborg

Anders PetterssonTitle: Global Product Manager, Loading EquipmentOffice: Getinge Infection Control AB, Getinge


over the technical project management from Anders Pettersson later in the project.

“They wanted a committed and versatile person as the project was quite complex,” says Bjerkås, who is today head of mechanical design at the Total Design Office department at Semcon Göteborg. A lot of it involved the development of a structured modular pro-gramme with combination options, to reduce the number of variants in the product range.

NILS BJERKÅS and his colleagues received sug-gestions and ideas about appearance and features from industrial designers employed by Getinge. Their design proposals would then be integrated into the finished product, without compromising functionality. In this, they were successful, as the finished products are very similar to the preliminary sketch. Aspects of the old features could be re-used, developed and adapted to the new design. They worked hard to find modules to keep the number of variants down, with the flexibility

to be used in different combinations.The big challenge was, of course, that the

deadline could not be moved. “We had to learn to prioritize more than

usual. We had to make decisions and move on, in order not to get bogged down and spend too much time on individual aspects. We had set clear milestones that we followed very closely.”

Semcon designers worked in parallel with the project’s industrial designers and the overall project manager, where good commu-nication was essential to make progress.

“All parties in the project could sit and work together in Semcon’s offices in Göte-borg, which of course made it easier to make

quick decisions on specific matters. This is a common approach for us at Semcon. It also makes it easier when you need expertise in any aspect,” says Bjerkås.

AN EXAMPLE OF this was when they were get-ting towards the end and needed someone with skills in technical documentation. An-other was when they had to build prototypes and were able to use Semcon’s own prototype workshops in Göteborg and Jönköping. Most of the tests were also carried out in Semcon’s own test centre.

“One challenge with this pressurized project was that we needed pictures for manuals and technical information, without having any finished products to photograph. A department within Semcon produced photo- realistic images – images that look like photo graphs but are computer-generated. This allowed us to produce manuals before the products were even made.”

All SMART products are different types


Semcon has developed a new control sys-tem where the three automatic features PowerDrive, Semi Automatic Loading and a height-adjustable loading table are integrated. The system is controlled from a panel on the handle, and allows the user to control the functions without letting go of the handle.

In this type of industry it is crucial that the products are easy to clean and that there are no places where dirt can collect. Round tubes and rounded corners were included in both design and construction work from the start.


of trolleys for transport and loading. In total there are over 40 variants - combinations of size, geometric differences and functions de-pending on the type of autoclave and custom-er requirements. The new trolleys have three automated functions that can be installed individually or in combinations. The first is an auxiliary drive - PowerDrive - to reduce the load on the back and shoulders with heavy loads. When you press a button an extra wheel folds down, enabling it to move both backwards and forwards.

The load tables on the trolleys are height-adjustable so that the user can always work at an ergonomically-correct height. The third feature is an automatic loading function, which allows the trolley to dock with the front of the autoclave or washer and automati cally unload with a simple press of a button.

“We had some of these features before, but weren’t able to combine them. Now, all the functions can be accessed via an integrated controller on the handle. Semcon did a good job of keeping the big picture in mind and de-

veloping the products we had ordered.” When it was time for launch, Anders Pet-

tersson fell ill, and Nils Bjerkås represented the products at the Medic Fair. This went well, and Getinge’s new products stood out compared with the competition.

“The holistic approach to the product and design, which is quite daring for this indus-try, received a lot of positive comments,” says Pettersson. “We will continue to put more emphasis on design. Design is not only about a product looking nice, but it should radiate precisely the values you want to communi-cate.”

SALES OF THE NEW SMART products will be driven by sales of autoclaves and washer-dis-infectors - it is very rare for Getinge to sell its trolleys separately.

“2011 was a very good year for us. It showed that we were right in thinking that the market wanted this type of complex prod-uct,” says Pettersson. 1

The trolley’s load table is height-adjustable so that the user can always work at an ergonomically- correct height.

In the construction work there have been very spe-cific weight requirements. A smart, neat design and a frame with rounded cor-ners that can also carry up to 200 kg. This requirement was solved with the help of computer-based analysis (finite element analysis) coupled with the physical testing of prototypes.

PowerDrive is an electric auxiliary drive for heavy loads and particularly useful when it has to be started from a standing position. With the touch of a button on the handle, an extra wheel folds down, enabling it to move both backwards and forwards.

The wheel design was adapted to the ergonomic design and makes the trolley easy to manoeuvre and run quietly, even with heavy weights. A challenge for Semcon, who after dialogue with various suppliers found a solution that meets all the customer’s requirements.

With the semi-automatic loading and unloading operation, the operator does not have to touch the hot load. The products to be disinfected are in a rack on wheels, placed on the trolley’s load-ing table. When you press the button, the rack is pushed into the autoclave, and emerges after disinfection.

”Design is not only about a product looking nice, but it should radiate precisely the values you want to communicate.”

Anders Pettersson, Getinge Infection Control


Hållbarhetsexperten

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR David Gillb-lom är handplockad till Semcon för sina kunskaper om hållbarhet. Hans jobb är att säkra alla leverantörsled miljömässigt – från design och produktion till distribution och återvinning.

– Vi ser hur en produkt är kon-struerad och hur återvinningsbar den är. Exempelvis säger ett EU-krav på bilar att de ska vara 85 till 90

procent återvinningsbara. Men de är långtifrån gjorda av 85 procent återvinningsbart material. Vi på Semcon kan utforska det glappet och möjligheterna att påverka tillverkningsprocessen, säger David Gillblom och fortsätter:

– Vi ska stötta kunderna var de än är i sin process. Det kan handla om projektledning i ett tidigt skede eller seminarier och work shops

för att lära konstruktörerna om hållbarhet. Vi går in och höjer med-vetandegraden.

Intresset för Semcons tjänster är stort – och växer inom området hållbar produktutveckling.

– En tydlig trend är att fler och fler vill ta ett större miljömässigt ansvar. Marknaden växer för tänket kring hållbarhet och det finns my-cket att göra där. Det handlar om

stora satsningar på ekonomisk och social systemnivå, inte bara detaljer.

David Gillblom tänker både smått och stort. På saker som kan göra skillnad.

– Jag vill förändra världen. Hållbarhetsarbetet gör nytta. Jag vill att alla på Semcon ska känna så framöver. Att vi verkligen gör någonting och att vi påverkar positivt.

DAVID GILLBLOM, HÅLLBARHETS- OCH HMI-INGENJÖR, SEMCON GÖTEBORG, SVERIGE

TEXT MARCUS OLSSON & JENS EKELUND

PHOTOS ANDERS DEROS, RICKARD KILSTRÖM &

NICKE JOHANSSON

SEMCON BRAINS


“There is a clear trend for more and more people wanting to take greater environmental responsibility.”

David Gillblom, Sustainability and HMI engineer, Semcon Göteborg

FUTURE BY SEMCON 2.2010 23FUTURE BY SEMCON 1.2012 23

The sustainability expert

DAVID GILLBLOM was hand-picked by Semcon for his knowledge of sustainability. His job is to provide environmental assurance throughout the development chain – from design and pro-duction to distribution and recycling.

“We see how a product is designed and how recyclable it is. For example, there is an EU requirement that cars should be 85–90 per cent recyclable. But they are a long way from being made from 85 per cent recyclable material. At Semcon we can explore this gap and opportuni-ties to influence the manu facturing process,” says Gillblom, continuing:

“We will support customers wherever they are in their process. This can include project manage-ment at an early stage, or seminars and work-shops to teach designers about sustainability. We raise the level of consciousness.”

Interest in Semcon’s services is substantial – and is growing within sustainable product development.

“There is a clear trend for more and more people wanting to take greater environmental re-sponsibility. The market is growing when it comes to thinking about sustainability and there is a lot to do there. We’re talking about large investments in economic and social systems – not just details.”

Gillblom thinks in terms of both the large and small scale. About things that can make a differ-ence.

“I want to change the world. Sustainability work benefits us. I want everyone at Semcon to feel like this in the future. To genuinely do some-thing and that it has a positive effect.”

david gillblom, sustainability and hmi engineer, semcon göteborg, sweden


ANNSOFI NIHLÉN knows all about what happens when a drug is absorbed into the body. Her area of expertise, pharmacokinetics, is a small but very important part of drug development.

“All people are different, weigh different amounts and have dif-ferent metabolisms. Therefore, it’s important to find out how much of a drug is absorbed and how quickly it disappears from the body, so that you can advocate a dosage that is not dangerous to anyone.”

Early drug development is a new

area within Semcon, currently em-ploying about twelve people. It’s a long process between discovering a molecule and a finished product on a pharmacy shelf. The process also requires many different skills.

“We cover a lot in drug develop-ment and hope to expand further in the future.”

Pharmacokinetics enters the process when a molecule has to be tested on animals and then humans. As a pharmacokineticist, Nihlén performs computer simula-tions and calculations regarding

how animals and humans respond to the substance.

“Last summer, for example, I ran simulations to optimize the dosage of a drug that a company is testing on cancer patients.”

Previously, Annsofi worked at a major pharmaceutical company, but at Semcon she helps a number of smaller biotech companies with their drug development.

“It’s really great working at Semcon and helping these small companies. I feel I can contribute with my skills and do some good.

annsofi nihlén, pharmacokineticist, semcon stockholm, sweden

The pharmaceutical expertBEHIND THE SCENES AT SEMCON BRAINSAnnsofi Nihlén uses simulation to see how drugs react inside the body. See Annsofi Nihlén talking about what makes her work exciting at semcon.com

SEMCON BRAINS

PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE SWEDISH MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY EXHIBITION IN STOCKHOLM “MARVELS OF THE HUMAN BODY”


The design expert

KALLE MAGNUSSON co-developed the exterior design of the Volvo V60. An assignment where the creative process was unique.

“As a rule, you’re given a few key words, but this time we got nothing. This was the approach of Steve Mattin, the head of design. It gave us freedom and felt challenging. I have myself been employed by and worked at Volvo in different positions for al-most 30 years. This was something completely new.

Semcon has a strong tradition of delivering its services to the Volvo Cars design department.

“You start by presenting a design concept. Then you go into detail before it becomes industrialized. With the V60, it started with a design competition for in-house designers before the selection was trimmed down and we started working on full-scale models.

Every day, Magnusson sees the result of what the team came up with almost five years ago.

“When the car came out it was the most extreme in its sector. The distinctive thing is its sportiness and audacity with its clear “coupé lines”. We were thinking sports estate and that it would be very Volvo. We got some inspiration from the classic P1800 ES, which was both sports car and estate car.”

Magnusson’s next design is on a larger scale. “I’m working with Volvo Buses. We’re currently

producing an exterior for a new bus. Design-wise, we’re talking completely different perspectives and dimensions than what I’ve worked on before. It’s a fun challenge.”

kalle magnusson, vehicle designer, semcon göteborg, sweden


Legendary car designer Gordon Murray has swapped speed for efficiency. But his T27 is not only the world’s most efficient electric car, it’s also extremely safe – thanks in part to Semcon.TEXT DAVID WILES PHOTOS MICHAEL ROBERT WILLIAMS & GMD

small is safe


Gordon Murray’s master-piece is the McLaren F1, a car described by Au-tocar magazine as “the finest driving machine yet built for the public road”. Not only was the F1 the world’s fast-est road car for many

years, but it was also practical; it combined a top speed of 372km/h with comfort, excellent driver visibility, plus room for two passengers – and their luggage.

While Murray’s current project may not be as sexy or as glamorous, it is no less groundbreaking. The T27 is the world’s most fuel-efficient electric car. And not only that: Murray, with his company Gordon Murray Design (GMD), has developed a revolutionary manufacturing process for producing it which promises lighter, cheaper vehicles that require less energy to make and with shorter time to market and less investment. The big automo-tive OEMs are paying attention and Murray is expecting big things.

“The idea behind leaving high-performance cars and starting this business was that it was the next challenge – and one where we could make a difference,” he says. “And, I think, make a good business out of it as well.”

THE MCLAREN F1 and Murray’s electric car, the T27, may be polar opposites in many ways, but they have more in common than meets the eye. For a start there is the seating configuration, with the driver seated in the middle of the cockpit with two passengers behind. Barry Lett, GMD’s design direc-tor, says the two cars also share a common packaging philosophy. “The seed of what was achievable with the occupant packag-ing and luggage packaging for a small city car was apparent when we were doing the McLaren F1,” he says. “Whether you are try-ing to design a supercar with a small frontal area for maximum aerodynamic benefit,

or you want to keep the exterior as small as possible for parking and congestion benefits, both cars have the same goal: to optimise the efficiency of the package. And of course the smaller you make the car, the easier it is to reduce weight.”

GMD’s focus on shedding weight has led to a car that – in its petrol-engine format, the T25 – is exactly 200kg lighter than a similarly- sized Smart, weighing in at just 575 kg. The battery-powered T27 still weighs only 680 kg.

Lightweight is key to T27’s remarkable fuel ef-ficiency – the equivalent of 350 mpg, or 0.81 litres/100km – but it is not everything. “It’s also the attention to detail,” says Murray, who made his name as a Formula 1 designer with Brabham and McLaren. “We focused on the wheel bearings, tire sizes, low inertia wheels – this comes from our racing background. It is such a different approach from a big car company where the wheels are styled first, and their size is chosen by the stylists. We are the opposite; we spent ages trying to get to the wheel rim as light as we possibly could.”

WHILE THE DESIGN of the T27 is finished and there are prototypes running, Gordon Murray Design has no plans to put the car into pro-duction itself. “We are essentially an intel-lectual property company, not a car manu-facturer,” says Murray. “We have devised and industrialised a new high-volume way of producing vehicles and we are in the process of selling as many licenses as we can to as

“Together with Semcon we have categorically proven that with the right design, the right materials and the right partnership, you can make small cars very safe.”

Professor Gordon Murray, CEO and technical director, GMD

Gordon Murray’s legendary McLaren F1 has more in common with the T27 that you might think.


many different companies as we can. T25 and T27 are physical entities, working examples of what we have trademarked.” At time of writ-ing there is interest in the iStream manu-facturing process from 22 countries. “We are currently in discussions with a group that would like to produce T25 and the T27 in the UK, which would be a real feather in all our caps,” says Murray. If the deal were signed to-day, the vehicles could be on the road in about two years.

MURRAY STARTED exploring the possibilities of devising a smarter way of building cars in the early 90s. “Nothing to do with emissions and fuel consumption in those days, but I started looking into why there were so few smaller vehicles around,” he says. “I saw that if you have to spend EUR 500 million on tooling for a tiny car, you are not going to make any money on it. That is why people don’t do it.”

So iStream aims to make small cars fi-nancially viable to produce. “This is totally

disruptive engineering,” says Murray. “An iStream plant doesn’t need a stamping plant, it doesn’t need a body-in-white spot welding plant, and in some cases it doesn’t even need a paint plant.”

iStream stands for Stabilized Tube Rein-forced Exoframe Advanced Manufacturing. “The exoframe is a very low carbon steel tube,” explains Murray. “In itself that frame is not terribly stiff from the point of view of torsion, bending or crash, but we have a low-

cost composite panel which is then placed into that frame and bonded to it.” That bond-ed structure creates immense torsion and bending stiffness and, most importantly, good control over crash loads. The rest of the body in white is a combination of non-structural injection-moulded plastic panels and some semi-structural injection moulded panels.

WHEN IT COMES TO automotive safety, the received wisdom has long been that bigger is better, but GMD set out to ensure that the T27 would achieve a minimum four stars in Euro NCAP tests. Lett says: “T27 was to be an electric vehicle specifically for city environ-ments that had to achieve the same level of safety as cars that are designed to bomb up and down the motorway at 70mph.” Mur-ray adds: “Because we have a very different structure and a very different architecture, we needed a partner who, like us, is used to thinking outside the box. We found that in Semcon.”

Professor Gordon Murray (right, with his design director Barry Lett) wanted a new challenge after his years in Formula 1. With his electric cars, he hopes to show that the development time can be reduced, that new solutions can be produced economically and that even small city cars can be made safe.

The electric car T27 can hold three adults and 750 litres of luggage, and weighs only 680 kg.


The first of three projects on the T27 in which Semcon was involved was a feasibility study looking into what kind of airbag and seatbelt systems could work with the T27’s unique architecture.“We had a blank sheet of paper really because you can’t necessar-ily apply the wisdom that you have from a normal car; you have to look at this car on its merits and come up with a system adapted for it,” says Nordine Chekaoui, systems group manager at Semcon UK. Happy with the results of the feasibility study, Gordon Murray Design asked Semcon to implement its solutions into the vehicle using virtual engineering.

TRADITIONAL VEHICLES usually have side airbags mounted in seats or doors and Inflatable cur-tains fitted in the side header rail to protect against side impacts. “To get airbag systems to protect body and head in a side impact crash scenario is quite difficult in this case because the occupant is in the middle of the vehicle,” says Chekaoui. “You need a side air-bag solution that will deploy in time and stay deployed for long enough for the occupant

to arrive and come into contact with it.” The other issue was that because of the canopy-style opening, it was not feasible to fit an inflatable curtain. Semcon’s solution was to fit one airbag mounted on the B pillar offering protection to both body and head.

THE FRONT AIRBAG was also a challenge: how to install an airbag in a steering wheel as small as the T27’s. “It is very difficult to find an airbag that is big enough but that would fit in such a small wheel,” says Chekaoui. “We looked at what could be done and came up

with a solution that was reasonable in terms of being packageable in a small wheel, but still effective in a crash.”

The next aspect was to devise the seatbelt system. “The belt geometry was not straight-forward, with the seat being so far inside the vehicle,” says Chekaoui. “Normally your belt hangs from the B pillar and comes across your chest. With the T27 you are in the centre of the car and you have occupants behind you who need to be able to get in and out.” GMD’s unique solution sees the seatbelt retractor mounted just behind the seat on the floorpan.

Nordine ChekaouiTitle: Systems Group ManagerOffice: Semcon UK

Q&A

Gordon Murray on the T27’s future■ How will the T27 change the automotive industry?I doubt it will change everything as at very high volumes, stamped steel still makes a lot of sense from the point of view of investment. But iStream still beats it on energy and lightweight. VW, Audi and BMW are now push-ing lightweight, but their methods are very expensive and energy intensive. Ours is the opposite.

■ What challenges do elec-tric car manufacturers face?A big obstacle is retail price, and that is proportional to the cost of the batteries,

plus the trade-off between cost and range; a five-seater family vehicle running on batteries makes no sense at all today. Managing a large battery mass in a crash is not easy, and there are issues with the charging infrastructure.

■ What sales ambitions do you have for the T27?At the moment there is no real opposition besides the Smart. Smart is self-limit-ing in its market because it is a two-seater with a small boot. T27 holds three adults and has 750 litres of luggage space. So we think there is a much wider market for it.

■ Who is the ideal buyer for T27?The biggest segment is the second or third family car. Other market segments are students and first-time buyers; learner drivers, or people who have just passed their test; then there are commuters and people who live in the city.

■ What lessons learned in Formula One have found their way into T27?Every single part of the T27 has been optimised for cost and weight and functionality. That is something that runs through the veins of every-one designing racing cars.


Semcon had to optimise belt functions like pretensioning and load limiting to work with the driver airbag system and the interfacing cabin geometry.

While Semcon’s engineers were at work on these restraint solutions, Gordon Murray De-sign asked for assistance in coming up with a better pulse profile for the T27 – basically to ensure that the occupants of this very small, very stiff car do not decelerate too abruptly in the event of an accident. “By tuning the shape and thickness of the longitudinal tubes at the front of the car we could get them to crush in

the right way, to get the maximum amount of energy management from the tube,” says Chekaoui.

THE T27 MAY BE TINY, but Murray, Lett and Chek-aoui are all happy with its level of safety, as well as the quick development time and the relatively low cost of the solutions. “Sure, we could have come up with some totally spectacular solu-tions, but these would not have been possible in real life because they would have been too expensive,” says Chekaoui. “Our solutions are concepts, but they are manufacturable.”

Murray says the safety work done by the two companies has implications not just for the T27 project but for the automotive industry as a whole. “There is a huge stigma attached to the safety of small cars,” he says. “Together with Semcon we have absolutely and categorically proven that with the right design, the right materials and the right part-nership, you can make small cars very safe. And we have demonstrated that both from an analysis point of view, and from testing. That is a very big step forward for the future of city cars.” 1

Professor Gordon MurrayTitle: CEO and Technical DirectorOffice: Gordon Murray Design, England

Barry LettTitle: Design Director Office: Gordon Murray Design, England


Q&A MIKE WALSHCONSUMER EXPERT

Consumers of the future won’t know how life would be without the internet, smartphones and being permanently online. But the future is, according to consumer expert Mike Walsh, already here. “We will look back on this time and say that this was a revolutionary shift.”

ike Walsh may be a futur-ist, but you won’t find him making predictions about what technologies and gadgets we will be using in 2050. What is of most interest to the 35-year-old Australian, who travels the world observing firsthand the latest trends and ideas, is how human beings will behave in the future. And

not the distant future, but tomorrow. Walsh studied law before getting involved

in the emerging field of online consumer behaviour. Following senior strategy roles at News Corporation in Australia and Asia, he became intrigued by the differences between digital consumers in emerging markets and those in the west. Today he is CEO of the consumer innovation research agency Tomor-row and a sought-after international speaker. Walsh talks to Future about how companies should engage with tomorrow’s consumers; why they need to behave like viruses; and how

the web will affect the next generation of con-sumer products.

You believe that the key to understanding the future is not technology and systems but rather people. Why?

When I try to predict who the winners and losers are going to be in industry, or which technological platforms are going to succeed, it always comes down to human behaviour and often the cultural dynamics of individual countries or populations, and how they see reality. This is often the best indicator of both trends and whether ‘things’ are going to work or not. Look at Intel. They have about 100 an-thropologists on staff. It is surprising in a way because they do not have a direct retail busi-ness – they are manufacturers. But they are plagued by this question of what is the future of technology. If they can’t understand that, they don’t know what kind of devices they are going to need to be making processors for.

The consumers of tomorrow will be the first generation brought up not knowing a world without the web and social media: how will this fact affect their behaviour as consumers?

TEXT DAVID WILES

PHOTOS MATTIAS BARDÅ

M


FACTS

Mike WalshTitle: CEO of Tomorrow Ltd., author and speaker.Hobbies: Photography. “But I shoot with film, not digital.”Favourite website: Wikipedia.Author of: Futuretainment: Yesterday the World Changed, Now It’s Your Turn.Websites: www.mike-walsh.comwww.futuretainment.comwww.facebook.com/mikejlwalsh

We will look back and say that this was a revolutionary shift – that this generation had their brains reshaped by exposure to technol-ogy. New research shows that young kids use the internet as a replacement for short-term memory. When we were at school, the smart-est kid was the one who knew the answer to every question. But when you have a room of 30 kids with smartphones, you could almost argue that their intelligence is commensurate with how fast their fingers can type. So this is a whole new generation of consumers in the way they discover brands, the way they expect to be communicated to, the way they commu-nicate with each other. Older business leaders still think of the internet as a channel. But the internet is not a channel. If you were someone who was born after 1994, the internet is around you all the time. So all consumers now are

networked across a range of plat-forms, and that changes the way they interact.

How should a company, such as a car manufacturer, react to the new generation of consumers?

The next generation’s new be-havioural tendencies are already impacting every stage of the product lifecycle. What is driving these changes is more than any one simple trend like mobile, the web or even platforms like social media. There is an expectation shared by young consumers today that their devices – whether they be phones or cars – should not exist in a vacuum. Objects should connect. The car of the future will not simply just have a clever iPhone dock and connection with Facebook – it will be insepa-rable from the customer’s own networks.

So how will the consumers of

the future choose their cars?The real question for young consumers

buying their first car will be not so different to previous generations but it must be up-dated to meet 21st century lifestyles. Namely, how can this new vehicle extend the range of possibilities for life experience?

Much of what is happening with the inter-net and social media now is around communi-cation and marketing. How will the internet affect products in the future?

One of the biggest trends we are going to see in the near future is what is being called ‘the Internet of things’. Everyday objects being equipped with sensors that are then linked to the internet. There are going to be some amazing developments as products that are currently in a sense ‘stupid’ – because they are not connected to anything – become more interlinked.

Where will we see this trend first?One of the first areas you’re going to see

this is in the energy space. There are huge investments being made in smart grids and smart power meters that will, for example,

“ The ability to constantly launch new products, adapt and offer diverse variations on customer needs will triumph over limited-release, perfectly-engineered products with long development phases.”

Mike Walsh, consumer expert

1 DISTRIBUTEDConsumers in the future will be tough to categorize definitively. They will have multiple contradictory

roles – mothers, social gamers, mobile virtual workers – all separate but linked with threads of common, distributed identity.

2 AUGMENTEDTomorrow’s consumer will be augmented through mobile and digital technologies. When they look

at a product, they will be also looking through the eyes of every consumer who has ever held it, with access to their ratings, opinions and recommendations. This will radically redefine the power relationship between brands and purchasers.

3 GLOBALTeenagers in China often have more in common with their counterparts in Brazil than they do with

their parents. Networking platforms are creating a new global sense of interconnectedness that makes a mockery of old world divisions like regional coding, movie release schedules and product versioning. But paradoxically, na-tional and cultural identity will continue to be a powerful building block to global uniformity.

trends for the consumer of the future, according to Mike Walsh3

Q&A MIKE WALSHCONSUMER EXPERT



throttle down your air conditioner at peak periods if you want to save money on your bill. Most of our household appliances will be equipped with small wireless chips that will allow them to monitor not only energy use, but to actually start to really understand usage patterns for appliances. Standalone GPS units will soon be close to dead because almost every smartphone not only has a GPS but will be increasingly used as a control device for the rest of the technology in the car. Your phone will unlock your car and it will become the biometric key to your entire network of devices.

Many Western companies are taking the products they sell in Europe or the US, reduc-ing their functionality, and then selling them in the developing world. Is that the right approach?

This is a very contentious question. Often the things that Western companies take out of products are the ones that those markets actually want. Chinese consumers, for exam-ple, are increasingly affluent and they actually want often higher specs and are prepared to

pay for them. In a lot of these emerging mar-kets we are seeing a lot of innovation. There is a wonderful trend in China – shanzhai, which means bandit technology. Mobile phones which started off as copies started to exceed their original specification, and I think that within five years some of these companies will start to develop premium brands them-selves. This is what happened to Japan after the war. They started making cheap stuff and then quickly moved up the food chain.

In your opinion, why has a company like Apple been able to attract the consumers of today?

In my view, Apple has excelled at one very important capability – simplifying the complexity of technological change into very simple customer propositions. To achieve this they sacrificed features, functionality, user freedoms and even product options, but in doing so they were able to take previously confusing product categories like tablets, smartphones, MP3 players, set top boxes, and reassure consumers that changing their behaviour to incorporate the new technology

was both worthwhile and exciting.You have said that companies should act

like viruses – constantly releasing and testing new products and ideas to keep ahead of dis-traction and indifference among consumers. Please expand.

We respect Apple for its highly engi-neered, perfectly designed iPhones. Each year, consumers wait eagerly for the new model – but despite its wide appeal, it is not a phone that necessarily suits everyone. Compare that to what is happening right now with the Android platform. There is an explosive diversity of phones being built us-ing Android, from $40 low-cost units right up to a top-of-the-line $20,000 Tag Heuer Link device, all running on the same operat-ing system.

What can companies learn from this?In the future I believe the ability to con-

stantly launch new products, adapt and offer diverse variations on customer needs will triumph over limited-release, perfectly-engineered products with long development phases. 1


When Siemens was commissioned to upgrade the turbine plant at Forsmark nuclear power plant, they chose to enlist the help of Semcon in documenting the process. A challenging project where nothing could go wrong and where delays were not an option.TEXT HANNAH HÄGGSTRÖM & JENNY PALM PHOTOS ALEX&MARTIN & NICKE JOHANSSON


FORSMARKS NUCLEAR power plant, beautifully situated on the Upp land coast about 20 km north of Öregrund, is one of the largest producers of elec-tricity in Sweden. According to Vattenfall, the largest share-holder, its reactors generate enough electricity each year to

supply Greater Stockholm three times over. One in every six kilowatt-hours consumed in Sweden comes from here.

But despite this high capacity there is con-tinuous improvement and modernization work. Amongst other things, Vattenfall has invested over SEK 5 billion in increasing plant efficiency.

This is where Siemens comes in, as one of the things they were asked to deliver was four new high-pressure turbines in connection with the decision to upgrade Forsmark.

“Here at Forsmark, turbines are of course the core business. That means we have a client who knows at least as much about tur-bines as us, which means a good climate for cooperation,” says Lars-Göran Karlsson, pro-ject manager for Siemens at Forsmark.

HAVING A NUCLEAR power plant as a customer places great demands on both safety – demon-strated by the Japanese disaster – and docu-mentation procedures. When Joakim Holm-qvist, documentation manager at Siemens,

examined the type of documentation needed for the work upgrading the turbines, it be-came clear that the job required more than one person. So they turned to Semcon and Denny Salomonsson, who has extensive expe-rience in similar assignments.

Together they began to put together a de-livery structure and planned how a database would look. It was about finding the correct structure for the entire process, from design to manufacturing and installation documentation. The project had specific traceability require-ments, due to regulatory requirements and the sensitive nature of the nuclear industry.

And even if Forsmark reactors 1 and 2 are identical in many cases, it doesn’t mean that

Ad quis enis et quam esed eum natemporerum audisciis nis sus

dolenime ne nobit volum vid milland igentisit quam quatiam

STIFF CHECKSAT FORSMARK


the documentation can be identical. The reactors have two separate ways of operating and must be treated accordingly. All the work done on Forsmark 2, for example, is unique to this reactor.

THE TASK WAS MADE more challenging by the fact that many of the subcontractors were from different countries. Denny Salomons-son therefore went on tour of Europe, where he visited all the subcontractors to create a uniform working method.

“Working on this, you have to have a ’heli-copter’ perspective. You have to be able to see the entire documentation process, which

runs to four or five years. In many projects the documentation is produced when the product is complete, but then we would have been too far behind,” says Salomonsson.

Lars-Göran Karlsson, Siemens Project Man ager at Forsmark, agrees with Salomons-son: there are many challenges.

“If you work with nuclear power, nothing can be done at short notice. It can take up to two months to have all personnel working onsite inspected and approved,” says Karlsson.

“It’s a challenging project, but we have sev-eral very good consulting firms that we work with and have great confidence in. Semcon is one of these. They quickly understood their

roles, knew what needed to be done and have brought a lot of expertise to the project,” says Karlsson.

THE DAY AFTER the reactor was shut down, when the high radiation level of the steam had subsided, work in the turbine hall could start. During the turbine installation, Semcon had an additional task to carry out. They were responsible for checking and ensuring qual-ity in the documentation process, which they have designed themselves, is correct. Parts of this work have been led by Hans Ulfsparre, an engineer at Semcon.

“The biggest challenge was to have fluency

Ad quis enis et quam esed eum natemporerum audisciis nis sus dolenime ne nobit volum vid milland igentisit quam quatiam


Hans UlfsparreTitle: Quality ControlOffice: Semcon, Uppsala, Sweden

through the whole process. There were many people involved, and it was crucial that every-one understood the importance of being clear and accurate and quickly passed the documen-tation along the chain,” he says.

EVERYTHING AT A nuclear power station is regulated down to the smallest detail. There is a framework within the Swedish Radia-tion Safety Authority, which decides Swed-ish regulatory requirements and also looks at international regulations. This contains all of the checks to be made and the materials to be approved. Put simply, Semcon’s task was to ensure that the requirements for the upgraded

system also met the Radiation Safety Author-ity’s requirements.

“Everything was coordinated and run by us. To give you some examples, we ensured that the right materials were installed, that all installation inspection checks were com-pleted and that the drawings were updated and approved after installation,” Ulfsparre says.

There was considerable work to be done, and work was carried out around the clock, seven days a week. Delays were not an option. Therefore there was a tremendous demand for the right preparations to be made. The weeks before closure were devoted to planning and

training for a variety of possible scenarios, among other things.

“If, for example, a design changed, we had to quickly and easily find the right location and replace it. Since we have 300–400 files of material we needed to have created the right structure beforehand to be able to work effec-tively,” says Holmqvist.

DESPITE MANY CHALLENGES, now the upgrade work is almost finished, and there is now only certain final documentation left to do.

”We’ve had an intense and successful jour-ney, during which we’ve developed a way of working that we are proud of,” says Ulfsparre. 1

“Semcon quickly understood their roles, knew what needed to be done and have brought a lot of expertise to the project.”

Lars-Göran Karlsson, Project Manager, Siemens

Joakim HolmqvistTitle: Documentation Manager, ForsmarkOffice: Siemens, Finspång, Sweden

Lars-Göran KarlssonTitle: Project Manager, ForsmarkOffice: Siemens, Finspång, Sweden

Denny SalomonssonTitle: Document ManagerOffice: Semcon, Göteborg, Sweden

THE SOLUTIONHOW SEMCON SOLVED THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM

THE ASSIGNMENT: Ascom, an international provider of business-critical communication solutions, wanted to develop a new bedside handset for hospital patients. Semcon’s assignment was to design the handset and deliver form-specific CAD data directly into the Ascom system.

THE SOLUTION: By studying how patients use and perceive their handsets a Semcon working group presented four different handsets, customized for different audiences with varying needs. The handset was designed so that children, adults and the elderly could understand it. In addition, they made it robust, easy to grip and easy to clean. Semcon’s focused team included industrial designers, ergonomists and surface designers.

THE RESULT: Ascom’s new patient handsets are ergonomic, user-friendly, easy to adapt to customer needs and can be relied on at all times.TEXT JONAS FRANZÉN PICTURES SEMCON

A handset for all situations


BUTTONS

The buttons are graded according to im-portance. At the top and therefore most accessible is the alarm button, which is also tactile so that it is possible to find in the dark. A backlit ring provides additional guidance and visual feedback when activated. A button with an exclamation mark has been added for non-urgent cases, thus avoiding over-use of the alarm button.

ERGONOMICS

The form is designed to fit both a child and an adult’s hand. Furthermore, it is designed in such a manner that it can be gripped when hanging upside down. One of the most common places for the handset is hanging by the cord over the bed, so that the unit ends up being upside down. The round shape around the alarm button makes it easy to find it even in the dark.

SILICON KEYPAD

The whole handset is waterproof and easy to clean. The silicon keypad is available in four versions, with different numbers of buttons, so that patients can have handset suitable for their needs. The fact that only the front needs to be changed facilitates production and flexibility.

SERVICE FLAP

A common cause of damage to handsets happens when patients use the handset to pull themselves up in bed when it is hanging over their head. A small flap on the back with a strain reliever makes the handset’s flex easy to replace.

RUBBER FOOT

A patient handset is in danger of slipping down if placed on a table because the flex’s gravity can pull it down. A rubber foot on the bottom of the handset increases friction with the table surface and reduces the risk of the handset falling off. This foot also hides the screws of the service flap.



ANTIBIOTICS OF THE FUTURE

With new types of antibiotics, the Norwegian company Lytix Biopharma is hoping to solve a serious problem in healthcare today – multi-resistant bacteria. Semcon has helped the company with the clinical testing of a nasal gel that may prove to be the antibiotic of the future.TEXT GITTAN CEDERVALL PHOTOS VEGARD GISKEHAUG & PETER WESTRUP


This was how the father of penicillin, Alex-ander Fleming, commented on the random discovery that genuinely came to revolution-ize modern medicine. Penicillin, and later other antibiotics, has saved millions of lives for more than half a century.

The use and popularity of antibiotics, how-ever, comes at a price, one which Fleming was already aware of and warned about. That price is resistance, and there are obvious problems within healthcare with multi-resistant bacte-ria – i.e. bacteria that have become resistant to many or even most antibiotics. Put simply, there will soon be nothing that attacks bac-teria.

The Norwegian pharmaceutical company Lytix Biopharma believes, however, that it has found a solution to the problem. A solution that it is hoped will lead to the next great leap forward in the fight against bacteria.

“Our drug even acts against multi-resistant bacteria and doesn’t have the same resistance problem as other antibiotics,” says Hedda Wold, project manager for infectious diseases at Lytix Biopharma in Oslo.

MRSA – Methicillin-resistant Staphylococ-cus aureus – is a variant of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus which has developed resistance to conventional antibiotics. MRSA is everywhere in society and is one of the bacterial types that are currently spreading in hospitals the world over. Both patients and staff may be asymptomatic carriers of MRSA, often in the nose or the skin. Patients who undergo surgery or have a weakened immune system can become infected and suffer from infections that are difficult to treat.

Lytix Biopharma has developed a gel that can be used to kill MRSA bacteria in the nose

or in the skin. The gel has been tested clin-ically on healthy subjects who are carriers of the bacterium. The results of a clinical ‘phase II’ trial, which ended in late 2011, are very promising.

“The study treated 24 healthy bacterial car-riers with gel inside their nostrils three times a day for three days. The thought is that such treatment prior to surgery will reduce the risk of infection during an operation,” says Wold, who was responsible for the clinical trial.

TO HELP HER, Wold had a team of clinical trials specialists from Semcon. Clinical drugs trials are certainly a new area of expertise for Sem-con, but a close-knit and experienced team of eight experts came to the company through the acquisition of the consulting business Stricent in the spring of 2011.

“We have worked together for several years and are all specialists in what we do. A moni-tor, for example, works in the clinic, supervis-ing and ensuring the quality of the results, one person is responsible for data collection, another for contact with authorities and one

1 2

3

HOW LYTIX ANTIBIOTICS WORK

The peptide LTX-109 attaches to the cell membrane.

The bacterial cell ruptures and dies. This effect is very fast. The cell has no time to defend itself and build up resistance.

Traditional antibiotics act from inside the bacterial cell. This works less well because the cell then has more time to build up resistance.

Cell membrane

Peptide

Bacterial cell

The chemical structure of the Peptide LTX-109 molecule

“When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic.”


of the team compiles the final report. There is also a statistician in each project group,” says Maria Persson, project manager and clinical testing manager at Semcon.

A proprietary system for electronic data collection, Trial-on-Line, offers clear advan-tages over the manually-completed forms that are traditionally used in clinical studies. Saving time and less paperwork, however, is not the most important aspect.

“The main advantage with electronic data collection is that everyone involved in the study can get a real-time picture of how the work is progressing. It gives a better overview for everyone involved. In addition, the quality of the collected data is more effectively guar-anteed, as any issues are straightened out on a continual basis instead of being addressed at the end of the study. Another advantage is that preparation of the final report can be simplified,” says Eva Linné-Larsson, medical writer at Semcon, who was responsible for the study report.

GETTING HEALTHY subjects of working age to take part voluntarily in a clinical trial is not always easy. The testing of Lytix Biopharma’s nasal gel lasted for nine weeks, during which time participants made over ten visits to the hospital in Malmö in southern Sweden where the study was carried out. Some of the visits were quickly over with, but on three occa-sions participants had to be prepared to stay at the clinic for up to six hours.

“Even with a certain amount of financial compensation, it is quite a lot to ask of people who have jobs and maybe even a family to look after,” says Persson.

Support for the study was, however, better than we dared hope for, in large part thanks to a slightly innovative initiative.

“We cast our net wide, inviting people to several information evenings during 2010. Those who were interested could then also provide a sample to see if they were carriers of MRSA. In this way we eventually assembled a group of suitable candidates,” says Persson.

The Malmö study, conducted to study the safety, tolerability and efficiency of the nasal gel in the treatment of healthy carriers of both MRSA and MSSA – i.e. methicillin-resistant as well as methicillin-susceptible staphylo-cocci – produced good results. However, a Phase II study is just one small step towards a finished drug. Additional Phase II studies with a focus on bacteria both in the nose and

the skin need to be carried out before the gel can move to clinical trials in the more ex-tensive Phase III tests. The drug will only be marketed if these also show good results.

“A market launch is at least three years away, probably more. We have not yet decided how to proceed or what indications we should focus on,” says Wold.

LYTIX BIOPHARMA was founded in 2003 by two scientists – Øystein Rekdal and John Sigurd Svendsen – working at the world’s most northerly university, in Tromsø in north-ern Norway. The company still conducts its

research and development in Tromsø, while work on clinical studies, marketing and ad-ministrative tasks is carried out at the office in Oslo, where Hedda Wold works.

“The entire company has fewer than 20 employees and only a dozen of these are full-time,” she says.

The active ingredient in Lytix Biopharma’s nasal gel is called LTX-109, and the gel has been given the trade name Lytixar. LTX-109 is a broad-spectrum drug, which not only kills bacteria but also viruses and a number of other microorganisms such as fungi.

“LTX-109 is a synthetic molecule, which is

1 2

3

HOW LYTIX ANTIBIOTICS WORK

The peptide LTX-109 attaches to the cell membrane.

The bacterial cell ruptures and dies. This effect is very fast. The cell has no time to defend itself and build up resistance.

Traditional antibiotics act from inside the bacterial cell. This works less well because the cell then has more time to build up resistance.

Cell membrane

Peptide

Bacterial cell

The chemical structure of the Peptide LTX-109 molecule

Hedda WoldTitle: Project Manager, infectious diseases Office: Lytix Biopharma, Oslo, Norway


similar to a fragment of a lytic peptide natu-rally occurring in cows’ milk. It has long been known that milk works as an antibacterial agent, and this is what is the starting point for our drug,” says Wold.

PEPTIDES ARE MOLECULES composed of a num-ber of different amino acids. Lytic peptides are also found in the human body, where they play an important role in the body’s own defence against bacteria and other micro-or-ganisms. Lytic peptides act by breaking down the cell membrane of the micro-organisms, a process called lysis by biologists.

“Lytic peptides and the fragment we use bind electrostatically to the cell membrane, which becomes unfit, leading to the cell fall-ing apart and dying,” explains Wold.

Lytix Biopharma has thus specialized in making synthetic molecules that mimic the action of natural lytic peptides, but which are considerably smaller and also stable and inex-pensive to produce. The main advantage with the molecules is that their antibacterial effect is different from that of other antibiotics.

The degradation of the cell membrane hap-pens very rapidly, and experiments conducted by Lytix Biopharma researchers demonstrate that this in turn minimizes the risk of bacteria developing defence mechanisms to make them resistant. Quite simply, the bacteria do not have time to defend themselves against this ‘attack’.

Traditional antibiotics do not work in the same way as lytic peptides. Instead, they first have to break into the cell, in order to exercise

the effect that makes the bacterium die. Most antibiotics, including penicillin, work by de-stroying the cell walls of bacteria, located out-side the cell membrane. To do this, they first have to affect the functions inside the cell, which then leads to the cell walls not merging correctly during cell division.

Other antibiotics, such as tetracyclines, instead act by inhibiting protein synthesis in the bacterial ribosome, which prevents it from dividing. Once again, this means that the an-tibiotic acts from within rather than outside the cell.

“It is considerably more difficult for cells to protect themselves against and become resistant to a mechanism acting externally,” Wold explains.

However, it is not just in the area of infec-tion that Lytix Biopharma hopes to follow in Fleming’s footsteps and play a revolutionary role in medicine. The company’s researchers have in fact also shown that lytic peptides can kill tumour cells, a discovery that offers hope for a completely new type of cancer drug. Producing synthetic lytic peptides for cancer treatment is therefore another considerable and exciting task for the small Norwegian pharmaceutical company.

BOTH MARIA PERSSON and Eva Linné-Larsson have enjoyed working with such promis-ing potential drugs, and hope to help Lytix Bio pharma further along the path towards finished products.

“It’s always fun working on clinical studies

that produce positive and clear results. It’s not always the case that hypotheses tested in a study prove to be as accurate as in this case,” Linné-Larsson says. 1

“It’s always fun working on clinical studies that produce positive and clear results. It’s not always the case that hypotheses tested in a study prove to be as accurate as in this case.”

Eva Linné-Larsson, Medical Writer, Semcon

Eva Linné-LarssonTitle: Medical WriterOffice: Semcon, Lund, Sweden

Maria PerssonTitle: Project Manager and

Clinical Testing ManagerOffice: Semcon, Lund, Sweden


Ultra Fog is one of the leading companies in the development of sprinkler systems using water fog. Effective fire extinguishing using minimal water makes the method particularly suitable for boats. Semcon has been involved in developing and documenting Ultra Fog’s unique products.

TEXT FLORENCE OPPENHEIM PHOTOS SOFIA SABEL

the fogthat saves lives


ire needs oxygen to spread. Water fog is made up of tiny droplets of water which cool the fire. As the droplets evaporate the volume of water in the air increases and the oxygen is pushed aside. This method is faster and more effective than traditional fire-fight-ing techniques.

Water fog uses significantly less water than fire-fighting with conventional low-pressure sprinkler systems. This is important after a fire has been put out, as large amounts of wa-ter can create devastation. It also reduces the need for fresh water, saving space on a boat.

“We use about 10 per cent of the water that a conventional sprinkler system needs,” says Mats Norling, marketing manager at Ultra Fog. Fresh water is also more environmentally friendly than traditional chemical extinguish-ing agents.

ULTRA FOG’S sprinkler systems are developed and prepared on the company’s premises in Hisings Backa outside Göteborg. The busi-ness was started in 1990 by two Swedish fire engineers who worked for the Rescue Services Agency, as it was called at the time. Since the end of the 1970s they had sought to develop modern and effective firefighting techniques for the emergency services. One of these was extinguishing with water fog, now used fre-quently by the emergency services.

They also saw a market for fixed fire fighting systems and made contact with various sup-pliers and industry people. They met a player within the marine industry and started the company. Their first customer was Stena Line, which currently has the fourth generation of Ultra Fog sprinkler systems on its ferries.

“Before the Scandinavian Star accident in 1990, there was no standard for this type of equipment. Ultra Fog, together with the Swed-ish Technical Research Institute, formed the basis of the regulatory framework for shipping, later adopted by the IMO (International Mari-time Organization),” says Norling.

PRODUCING TINY DROPLETS of water with a good spray pattern requires special nozzles, in dif-ferent sizes and with high pressure, normally around 100 bars. Ultra Fog’s product range includes a large range of nozzles with differ-ent performances, all of which are tested in

full-scale fire tests. Their customers are in the offshore industry, commercial shipping and private yachts, but cultural buildings, in-dustrial applications and office/residential are also growing areas.

The sprinkler system consists of a pump station, section valves and nozzles. Each in-stallation is unique, since hardly any boat is the same.

“The placement of the nozzles is unique to each client and requires a lot of work ahead of each installation. Because we are developing new nozzles and applications in at the same time, we have decided to bring in Semcon’s expertise,” says Norling.

Jukka-Pekka Mäki is one of the Semcon designers who have worked on designing and calculating the placement of the sprinkler system. First and foremost it is important to understand the complex regulations that apply to the different environments that the systems will be installed in. Based on this, he

estimates where pumps and nozzles should be positioned for best performance, whilst it shouldn’t be unnecessarily expensive.

“You have to be very careful, both with function and for the installation to be ap-proved,” says Mäki. Correcting any errors afterwards is very costly as a lot of piping has to be installed in the boat’s frame. A degree of standardization is possible, for example if a certain boat manufacturer has a standard set-up in their models. However, there are always adjustments to make even if the basic structure is the same,” he says.

THE SYSTEM ALSO has a separate monitoring function. When the classification societies (who verify Ultra Fog systems) wanted clearer documentation of system operation and monitoring, Ultra Fog contacted Semcon.

“We needed independent eyes to take a close look at the system and give feedback on how to further clarify the documentation,” says Norling.” It’s easy to overlook things when you yourself have to explain how the system basically works. Also, we had a lot to do.”

The assignment went to Semcon automa-tion engineer Tobias Månsson. Ultra Fog were already aware of some of the adjustments he made, but now they had a clear focus on what needed to be adjusted and prioritized.

“It was mostly about clarity in relation to the user. There is a panel with a touch screen, and it was particularly important for us to get an outside viewpoint. We have used these de-scriptions internally when revising the manu-als,” Norling says.

Tobias Månsson concentrated on how the system worked and documented everything. When does the alarm go off? What happens then? What controls the water level in the tank? What is the status of the separate units?

“You can’t see a lot of what is happen-ing from the outside,” says Månsson. “I went through the system both physically and in the computer, and tried to tie together the system’s logic with what was actually happen-ing. It was almost like a manual, though a very technical one.”

ULTRA FOG HAS also used Semcon to develop guidelines for installation, one for land-based systems and one for marine systems.

“These guidelines are written from a cus-tomer perspective, to give different readers an overview of the installation,” says Norling. 1

“We use about 10 per cent of the water that a conventional sprinkler system needs.”

Mats Norling,

marketing manager, Ultra Fog

F

Ultra FogUltra Fog AB has been active in fog sprin-kler manufacturing since the 1980s.The main markets are in shipping, especially in parts of Asia, the USA and Southern Europe, but land-based systems are becoming increasingly popular. The head office and most manufacturing is located in Göteborg.

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“We needed independent eyes to take a close look at the system and give feedback on how to further clarify the documentation.”

Mats Norling, Marketing Manager, Ultra Fog

Tobias MånssonTitle: Automation EngineerOffice: Semcon Göteborg, Sweden

Jukka-Pekka MäkiTitle: Designer/Geometry Assurance EngineerOffice: Semcon Göteborg, Sweden

Mats NorlingTitle: Marketing ManagerOffice: Ultra Fog, Hisings Backa, Sweden

Ultra Fog’s sprinkler system consists of a pump sta-tion, section valves and nozzles. Each installation is unique and requires careful calculation.

SEMCON UPDATESEMCON UPDATE WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEMCON’S WORLD

BUILDING THE WORLD’S leading neutron source for materials research is the goal of the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, who Semcon has now signed a contract with.

Semcon is one of the technical consulting firms involved in the project to build a multidisciplinary research centre, based on the world’s most powerful neutron source. It will include work on project management, construction of the facility and establishing quality systems.

“It’s amazing – truly unique. It’s a big project

and a very interesting organization. Right now we have over 20 different nationalities working on the project,” says Ann Gidner, who is in charge of Semcon’s business with ESS.

The construction of the ESS is a European collaborative project with 17 partner countries. The plant being built could be compared to a giant microscope, which studies materi-als, from polymers and drugs to membranes and molecules, to understand how they are constructed and how they work. When ESS is

finished it will be used by 2,000–3,000 scien-tists annually.

Semcon already has people in place working on project planning, and is well suited to contribute to the project, according to Gidner.

“We are very diverse, with everything from design to project management. We are not only contributing resources, we are helping to develop the project,” she says. Building work on ESS is scheduled to begin during 2013, to open in 2019 and to be fully operational by 2025. 1

Semcon delivers to ESS

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On 26 April, Semcon will have a new CEO. Markus Granlund, currently chief legal officer and deputy CEO of Semcon, talks to Future by Semcon about continuity, financial crises and inspiring colleagues.

How does it feel to be appointed CEO of Semcon?

“Flattering and inspiring, but I also have great respect for the challenge.”How did you end up at Semcon?

“After law and economics studies in Sweden and Australia, I worked as a lawyer, first in Australia, then at one of Sweden’s largest corporate law firms, when I got an offer to come to Semcon in 2008 to help build the group’s legal department. I was attracted by being part of a larger team, getting closer to business, following the development of a listed company and finding creative business proposals. Last autumn, I was appointed deputy CEO.”You came to Semcon during the financial crisis, which hit the company hard.

“Yes, it was a very turbulent time, with major layoffs and declining business. In the middle of this, we were trying to cre-ate a platform for global expansion. It was a challenge in extreme conditions, but now our hard work is starting to pay off.” What did you learn from the financial crisis?

“It was an instructive journey. There is a lot of positive thinking and tremen-

dous creativity within Semcon and despite hard times we never failed to deliver to our customers. I believe this is an important reason for our recovery - that customers never lost confidence in us thanks to our skilled employees.”Is Semcon better prepared today to face another financial crisis?

“Yes, we have spread our risks much more and have an improved customer mix where no customer accounts for more than 10% of our total sales. We now have a platform for further expan-sion which gives the company great po-tential. If there is a new global economic crisis it will of course affect Semcon, but now we can decide earlier whether we need to accelerate or slow down.”What do you see as the biggest challenge for Semcon?

“Taking Semcon to the next level. We have great opportunities to take advan-tage of the presence we have in Sweden, Germany, Hungary, UK, India, China and

Brazil, and offer more complete solutions. This challenge is also one of Semcon’s greatest opportunities. We have 3,000 skilled and motivated employees who will do whatever it takes to deliver the best solutions to our customers. This is Semcon’s strength and the key to our success.”What can customers and employees expect from you as CEO?

“They can expect continuity. I have been involved in coming up with the company’s current strategies and we will continue in the same way. Initially,

I will have big ears and a small mouth. I will be travelling around and listening to employees and customers to see how I can best support the business and make us even more attractive.”

You are a lawyer who will largely lead engineers. Is this a problem?

“I am fascinated by the innovative solutions that we offer our customers. I really appreciate the cooperation I have with my colleagues, whether they are en-gineers or from a different background. We complement each other and I see that as a strength. 1

“The challenge is to take Semcon to the next level”


IN PARTNERSHIP with BMB, which modi-fies buses and trucks for VW, Semcon recently completed a project that will see public transport buses in Brazil adapted and modified for low-entry ac-cess. The changes were made on behalf of the VW-owned MAN Truck and Bus, who anticipate increased demand in the lead-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and hope the modifications will improve passenger access.

“The fact that it has lower access and no stairs makes it especially suitable for disabled people who use wheelchairs. It

can also be lowered further, bringing the entrance just 30 cm from the ground,” says Julio Oliveira, project leader, Semcon Brazil.

The project took 18 months, and in-volved a team of ten Semcon employees. They were given the task of upgrad-ing the buses’ chassis to meet national standards for low-entry vehicles, and developing a new front air suspension, including analysis of MBS (Multi-body simulation).

“This kind of work means a lot because it demonstrates our ability to develop suspensions, using many techniques and digital validation,” adds Oliveira. “Hope-fully this development will open up similar projects in Brazil.” 1

The incoming CEO, Markus Granlund, is looking forward to further developing Semcon’s services together with over 3000 employees around the world.

ABOUTName: Markus GranlundLives: Brottkärr, outside Göteborg, Sweden Family: Wife Sophia, sons Leo (3) and Ted (1)Interests: Tennis, food, travel

Semcon in electric vehicle projectA Swedish project, called ELDRIVET, with an ambition to both expand and strengthen the automotive industry’s expertise in electric propulsion, has attracted players from both small and large busi-nesses and universities. At first, they are looking at new refrigera-tors and testing methods that will lead to improvements in electric motor performance and lifespan. Semcon is involved in two projects. Among other things, we are focus-ing on a new technique in the testing of electric motors. 1

Low entry buses for 2014 World Cup

1 ULTRA FOG PUTTING OUT FIRES WITH MIST

1 SHORTEST TIME TO MARKET WINS THE PRIZE

1 THE WORLD’S MOST EFFICIENT ELECTRIC CAR – SMALL AND SAFE

Online customers are changing the world – Mike Walsh explains how

B SVERIGE PORTO BETALT PORT PAYÈFUTURESEMCON AB417 80 GÖTEBORG

future by semcon

#1 2012

CUSTOMER SOFTHE FUTUR E

AFTER WORK

PONTUS LINDBERG:

“Ironman has taught me to focus”About me“I like to work long-term with a clear focus on results and discipline, both at work and in my free time. At work, I work with pharmaceuti-cals at Semcon and in my free time I train and compete in what has been called the world’s toughest sport – the Ironman triathlon dis-tance. I am 35 years old and I live with my girl-friend and four bikes in Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm.” About my job“I have a Masters in Engineering, specialising in technical biology and have recently started a new assignment at AstraZeneca. Basically, it’s about developing tablets, making sure that the active substance is excreted in the right place in the body.”

About Ironman“I was looking for a physical challenge, and because Ironman is the hardest thing to do, I wanted to try it. When I noticed that I was good at it and that I continued to develop, it gave me more energy and focus to con-tinue.

In August 2011 I became the Swedish Ironman champion. It was a great feeling.

I started when I was 28, but I swam com-petitively when I was young, so I had some experience from before. Most of my com-petitors are full-time professionals who has been active in the sport since their teens, so of course I had some catching up to do. On the other hand, I continue to get better and better at the same time as many of my age have already peaked.

What I’ve learned from Ironman:“The great thing with Ironman is that it is so physically demanding. It inspires me to work towards long-term goals. My training has taught me to set challenging but realistic goals, to have staying power and be able to work towards a goal without losing focus. I see my job in the same way. “

FACTS: IRONMAN/TRIATHLONThe triathlon is an endurance sport com-prising swimming, cycling and running performed back-to-back. There are differ-ent distances but Ironman is the toughest variant, with its 3,860 metre swim, 180 km cycling and 42 km run.

name Pontus Lindberg what i do at work Civil engineer, technical biologyoffice Semcon, Stockholmwhat i do after work Triathlon, Swedish Ironman championcurrent challenge Getting into my new assignment at AstraZeneca

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A MAGAZINE ABOUT ENGINEERING SERVICES & PRODUCT INFORMATION # 1 2012

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