Customized and contextualised solutions
The solutions oriented partnership approach

An introduction to the HiCS project: an action research project funded by the European Community under the Competitive and Sustainable Growth Programme.

THE GENERAL CONTEXT

Today’s production and consumption patterns are changing and, consequently, companies find themselves answering to a host of complex and specific individual and social demands. Demands that single customised products and services can no longer satisfy on their own.
To respond to these demands, companies are turning towards providing and delivering solutions, defined as an integrated and consistent array of local and global products and services designed to be jointly used and whose combination is specifically suited to fit the customer’s needs and desires.
However, even if there exists a consensus among companies on the necessity and the opportunity to move in this direction, the shift towards becoming a solution provider is not easy. It means that a company must relate with clients, companies (often, even competitors) and others in a completely new way. It means looking at clients in their specific “context of use” and considering companies and stakeholders as partners in the process of generating, providing and delivering solutions.

THE SOLUTION ORIENTED PARTNERSHIP APPROACH

The last couple of years have seen the birth of various schools of thought concerning solutions. One of these has been coined the “Solutions Oriented Partnership approach”. Its main idea is that companies must work together in the form of a partnership finalised to deliver a solution. A solution that answers the specific customer demands as they appear in the customer’s specific context of use. In other words, they must act as customer driven networks of partners that develop design, manufacturing and delivery systems offering high levels of accessibility, customisation and contextualisation while presenting a sustainable social environmental profile.

THE HiCS PROJECTS

Its Focus
To develop, test and implement a methodology based on the Solutions Oriented Partnership approach that generates industrialised, context specific and sustainable solutions that respond to society’s ever-changing needs.

Its Methodology
The methodology is structured around the development of a shared technological, organisational and knowledge based platform that customer driven network of partners can use to create context specific industrialised solutions.
The methodology begins with the identification of the characteristics that define the various contexts of use in question, which in the case of HiCS projects is people with reduced access to food. Once identified, a set of global/local partnerships is then created to answer to the technological, organisational and knowledge based needs set forth by the given contexts of use. In particular, while the global partners strive to consolidate the main solution platform, the local/specific customer driven partnerships aim to develop and deliver the solutions at the local level.
Ultimately, the HiCS project strives to develop and deliver industrialised solutions that demand a global and local solution architecture. Each specific set of solutions developed is based on a global platform provided by a network of companies (i.e. the companies involved in the HiCS project) and some local companies that together develop, manufacture, produce and deliver highly context specific solutions.

Its test environment / reduced access to food
To test this methodology, the HiCS project, which is made up for four research institutes, 4 industrial partners and one consumer association, has focused its attention of the case of people with reduce access to food.
While the research institutes are focusing their efforts on defining and fine-tuning a flexible and context transferable methodology and set of tools, the industrial partners, in collaboration with the chosen consumer associations, are concentrating on testing and implementing them in four specific contexts within the chosen case of people with reduced access to food.

“Solution oriented partnership, How to design industrialised sustainable solutions” edited by E. Manzini, L. Collina, S. Evans, Cranfield University, 2004 (ISBN 1861 94 10 64)
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“Food delivery solutions, Cases of solution oriented partnership” edited by F. Jégou, P. Joore, Cranfield University, 2004 (ISBN 1861 94 10 72)
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