Good morning all You faithful readers of my daily posts here in my blog. First at all I need to congratulate all of us because You are just about to read my 50th (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) – that`s exactly the number of exclamation marks which I have put here – consecutive daily post. Be true with me, did anybody of You read all of these? If yes, which one did You like (or hate) the most? Any other comments for me, before I start to write and publish the next 50 of my daily posts? Maybe we should organise a virtual “Readers Meeting” for the day of my post number 100 ?
Today I would like to share with You the story about how we at Vulkan do Brasil have invented our BRAIN about two and a half years ago.
As I already have explained to You in my post number 10 on June 27 (https://klausfhepp.blogspot.com/2020/06/what-pride-5th-birthday-of-our.html), we had created successfully our brazilian DPPA (Development of Products, Processes and Applications) department at our wonderful company Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) at the beginning of 2015.
And since its birth, our DPPA has been constantly and in a very efficient, disciplined and productive way – following very strictly our internal standard process, which we had determined and implemented especially for our DPPA right at the beginning – working upon the development of new products, processes and applications.
The reason for doing this and for doing this exactly in the way as we were doing it from the very beginning on has often been revised and adjusted, but never been questionned by us. It makes full sence and delivers us wonderful results, as You can see by the examples of the several beautiful state-of-the-art products and technologies, which we have been successfully launching for our customers in the different industries in Brazil, Latin America and worldwide during the last 5 years.
But about three years ago we slowly but continuously started to have some doubts with respect to the ability of our organisation, to focus openly and in an agile style on totally new technologies, processes and application ideas. When we – at the beginning mainly my colleagues Josias Leal, Development & Engineering Director (josias.leal@vulkan.com, +55 11 98571 2107), Marcel Moraes, Development Manager (marcel.moraes@vulkan.com, +55 11 97335 3872) and myself – started to participate in public events about new technologies and cultures, we detected a major weakness of our organisation.
The focus of our whole organisation, means company, on new technologies was concentrated in our development department. But the colleagues in our DPPA were following strictly our standard development process and were practically totally focussed on the project management for the new products upon which they were working. This made them unable to spent time and energy for looking at totally other subjects like completely new technologies and this also kept them totally away from going outside our company for participation in interesting events and for doing networking with other technology developpers, suppliers of new technologies and so an.
Josias, Marcel and I came to the frustrating conclusion, that we had locked ourselfes unconsciously in a cage and our immediate conclusion was, that we needed to brake this cage open.
This was the birthday of our BRAIN group, as we called it. The idea came clear during a brainstorming session, to which we had invited several other colleagues and where we discussed this situation and possible solutions very openly and constructively.
And the results of our brainstorming were overwhelming. Like so often in life it is just the question of a right moment, a right idea, of a right spark and the knot, which until then seemed so hard to open, opens almost without force and the new idea and concept presents itself almost autonomously by itself.
Once again this showed us, that the best and most sustainable solutions are always the most simple and self-evident ones.
This brainstorming session day became the first day of our freshly founded interdisciplinary BRAIN group at Vulkan do Brasil, which has strongly and impressively developped since then and continues as an integral and important part of our company since then.
I hope, I have called Your attention and curiosity for this subject and invention and that You will look up my future posts, where I will share some more insights and experiences about our Vulkan do Brasil BRAIN group with You.
In a few minutes my todays almost endless series of participation in international conferences with Vulkan do Brasil colleagues, colleagues from some other worldwide Vulkan Group subsidiaries and several external business partners and friends will start and I need to prepare a pot of my beloved Indian Tchai tea quickly.
Enjoy the beautiful day and have lots of success with all Your todays activities. See You back here again in my blog tomorrow.
Uma resposta
Tks for the important comments, Josias. I feel very honored and happy, to be able to work together with such brilliant people like You and Marcel and all other wonderful BRAIN group members. Bu the way – I know of meanwhile at least 3 other companies which have also founded BRAIN groups internally.