Redeveloping the Hewlett-Packard Kittyhawk Disk Drive to Be a Success

Kittyhawk 2.0

Redeveloping the HP Kittyhawk disk drive to be a success.

Group 02
Jocelyne Corral, Thet Soe, Joy Wong, Jason Salvador
April 23, 2018

Table of Contents

Company Overview        3

Project Overview        3

Project Organization        4

Responsibility Assignment        4

Stakeholder Analysis        5

Scope        6

Objectives        6

Requirements        6

Assumptions        6

Constraints        7

Work Breakdown Structure        7

Schedule        10

Milestone List        10

PERT/CPM Analysis        11

Gantt Chart        12

Financial Analysis        12

Project Cost Estimates        12

Payback Analysis        15

ROI        16

NPV        16

Risk Analysis        17

Company Overview

More commonly known as HP, Hewlett-Packard is a multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, that provides products, technologies, software, solutions and services to consumers and businesses of all sizes. Hewlett-Packard found small beginnings in 1939 from a rented one-car garage of Silicon Valley by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, initially producing a line of electronic test equipment. It quickly and successfully grew to be considered one of the world’s leading enterprise technology companies, ranking #42 on Forbes Most Valuable Brands list.

Its Disk Memory division (DMD) was a small but profitable sector within the company. DMD generally prided itself in developing mass storage, high performance disk drives. However, DMD’s general manager, Bruce Spenner sought to develop a smaller and more functional disk. In 1992, HP introduced the smallest hard disk drive in the world - the Kittyhawk, named after the North Carolina town where Orville and Wilbur Wright proved the possibility of a sustained flight. With 1.3-inch diameter disks, HP hoped that Kittyhawk would give them a higher profile position in the disk drive market.

Spenner set challenging goals for Kittyhawk, including introducing Kittyhawk within 12 months of the inception of the project, accomplishing a breakeven time of 36 months, and achieving a $100 million revenue rate. Although Kittyhawk was able to launch within the expected timeframe, the revenue it generated was much less than anticipated. It seemed as if Kittyhawk’s failure was a result of incorrect assumptions about the demands of the disk-drive market.

In realizing the value of the untapped market for small and inexpensive drives, our group provides the recommendation to the DMD division of HP to redesign the Kittyhawk drive to be more affordable to the tune of $50 while maintaining its size of 1.3 inches and ability to withstand a 3-foot drop onto concrete floor. The demand from manufacturers hints toward success in generating revenue through this avenue.

Project Overview

Our project team is proposing a modification of the Kittyhawk drive, to be introduced as Kittyhawk 2.0 for a $50 alternative to durable storage. A discussion of the new Kittyhawk drive, appropriately named Kittyhawk 2.0, gained the attention of manufacturers who were in the market for a small reliable storage drive at an inexpensive price. Even though designing a drive to be inexpensive, yet simple, seems to be a huge challenge, taking the steps to make Kittyhawk 2.0 is not impossible. In fact, manufacturers have shown interest in the idea of an inexpensive storage drive. As the Nintendo exhibition, a manager replied that their company would definitely be interested in reliable and inexpensive storage for their game cartridges - more specifically in the price range of a $50 drive. There seems to be a high demand for Kittyhawk 2.0 in the storage drive market already.

The most challenging aspect of the Kittyhawk 2.0 project is finding a way to reduce the cost of the storage drive so that it can be sold for $50. Negotiating lower costs of raw materials with the suppliers and ensuring that the production process is efficient and free from bottlenecks will be extremely essential to cost reduction. Kittyhawk 2.0 will be tailored to manufacturers who are seeking inexpensive data storage for devices and will drive success by being the first mover in the storage drive market.

Introducing Kittyhawk 2.0 to the storage drive market would meet demand to generate large revenues to ensure compensation for the time and cost of producing the new drive, as well as reward HP with profits, making it a worthwhile investment. In addition to the revenue Kittyhawk 2.0 could potentially generate, successfully designing and marketing a $50 drive would add to the reputation of HP’s innovative culture. Creating a reliable and inexpensive storage facet would show business consumers that HP is capable of listening and adapting to the needs of the market.

Project Organization

Responsibility Assignment

On the following page is a chart listing the members of the project with their title and their responsibilities with the team. The chart organizes who has principal responsibility for a task and who additionally adds support for the task. Overseeing the project, we have Jason Salvador. Salvador was chosen for his experience managing projects at HP and his expertise with keeping a project on task.

As head of accounting, Jocelyne Corral keeps record of the costs incurred within the project’s life cycle. Corral ensures the project stays within the budgetary constraints and has a balanced ratio of assets to liabilities, otherwise we run the risk of going over budget and encountering a possible project failure. Corral was chosen for her 5 years of experience with accounting at HP.

Thet Soe is the designated head of research and development. The main responsibility of this role is to assess how to bring the critical aspects of the product together through research and make the features feasible. After a series of testing and building prototypes, the final product comes to fruition. Soe had a hand in developing HP’s 3.5-inch drive so he understands what is needed to make a different, more economical drive and that is why he was chosen to lead R&D.

Priya Bahl, who recently joined HP with an MBA, is the marketing manager. Without the proper marketing, we can run into various issues including marketing to the wrong groups, under-marketing, or over-marketing. Without Bahl’s expertise, the product would not reach the numbers necessary to create a profit and would most likely fail.