BIZ CASE STUDY #1
- The Anglo American Company -
Innovative Technology Development In The Primary Sector
Introduction to Anglo American:
➢ One of the world’s leading mining companies
➢ Involved in exploration, extraction and processing
➢ Works in many metals and
minerals, e.g. platinum, diamonds,
copper, iron ore, coal
➢ A major employer in Europe and
Africa
➢ Anglo Technical and Anglo Research divisions collaborate and support whole group.
New products, processes and services are created through innovation. Anglo American
focuses its research on improving the performance of its existing processes, developing
new competitive processes, and supporting the wider organization through specialist
mineralogy and analytical services. This enables its customers to receive help from shared
best practice, as well as from the development of emerging technologies. These are new,
often specialized technologies that may be used in mainstream business applications to
improve safety, reduce energy, increase water usage efficiency, lower overall production
cost, enhance product qualities or increase a company’s ability to recover value from its
activities.
As organizations develop, they are constantly looking for new ways of doing things and of
meeting customer needs in a better way. There are many diverse sources of ideas for new
products and processes.
Before a new product or process is launched, it must go through a series of phases of
development. These phases may take place over several years:
➢ The development starts with a well-defined problem that the business needs to solve
➢ Once a new idea to address the problem has been found, the next stage is to produce
➢ A structured development plan
➢ The development plan will show what business needs the new product will fill
➢ The plan will also show many of the features and help the innovation will deliver
➢ It also involves estimating the costs of evaluating an idea, which sometimes means
that alternative solutions are cost-effective
➢ Research is the first stage in innovative technology development
Research and Development
Research
➢ The first stage in new technology or product development
➢ Gathers, records and tests data to find solution
Development
