1. Sequential versus Party Parallel Development Processes
• Before mid-1990s, most US companies used sequential NPD process; now many use partly parallel process.
•Partly parallel process shortens overall development time, and enables closer coordination between stages.
•In some situations, however, a parallel development process can increase risks.
2. Project Champions
•Benefits of Championing
-Senior execs have power to fight for project
-They can gain access to resources
-They can communicate with multiple areas of firm
•Risks of Championing
-Role as champion may cloud judgment about project
-May suffer from escalating commitment
-Others may fear challenging senior executive
-May benefit firm to develop “antichampions” and encourage expression of dissenting opinion.
•Five Myths About Product Champions
-Projects with champions are more likely to be successful in the market (many factors determining market success are typically beyond champion’s control)
-Champions get involved because they are excited about project rather than from self-interest (results suggest that champions more likely to support projects that benefit their own departments)
-Champions are more likely to be involved with radical innovation projects (equally likely to be involved with incremental projects)
-Champions are more likely to be from high (low) levels in firm (either is equally likely)
-Champions are more likely to be from marketing (15% from R&D, 14% from marketing, rest were from other functions or were users)
3. Involving Customers and Suppliers in the Development Process
• Involving Customers
-Customer is often best able to identify the maximum performance capabilities and minimum service requirements of new product.
-Customers may be involved on NPD team.
-Firms may also use beta testing to get customer input early in the development process.
-Some studies suggest that it is more valuable to use “lead users” than a random sample of customers.
（Lead users: Customers who face the same general needs of marketplace but experience them earlier than rest of market and benefit disproportionately from solutions.）
• Involving Suppliers
-Involving suppliers on NPD team or consulting as an alliance partner can improve product design and development efficiency.
-Suppliers can suggest alternative inputs that reduce cost or improve functionality.
4. Tools for Improving the New Product Development Process
• Stage-Gate Processes
-Utilize tough go/kill decision points in the development process help filter out bad projects.
-The time and cost of projects escalates with each stage, thus stage-gate processes only permit a project to proceed if all assessments indicate success.
-The stage-gate process can be modified to better fit a firm’s particular development needs.
•Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
-QFD improves communication and coordination between engineering, marketing, and manufacturing.
-Steps for QFD
Team identifies customer requirements.
Team weights requirements in terms of relative importance.
Team identifies engineering attributes that drive performance.
Team enters correlations between different engineering attributes.
Team indicates relationship between engineering attributes and customer requirements.
Team multiplies customer importance rating by relationship to engineering attribute and then sums for each attribute.
Team evaluates competition.
Using relative importance ratings for engineering attributes and scores for competing products, team determines design targets.
Team evaluates the new design based on the design targets.
• Design for Manufacturing often involves a set of design rules that reduce cost and development time, while boosting quality.
5. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
• FMEA is a method by which firms identify potential failures in a system, classify them according to their severity, and create a plan to prevent them.
-Potential failure modes are evaluated on three criteria of risk: severity, likelihood, and inability of controls to detect the failure.
-Each criteria is given a score (1-lowest, 5-highest)
-Composite score is used to prioritize development efforts
6. Computer-Aided Design/�Computer-Aided Manufacturing
• Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is the use of computers to build and test designs.
-Enables rapid and inexpensive prototyping.
• Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) is the use of machine-controlled processes in manufacturing.
-Increases flexibility by enabling faster changes in production set ups. More product variations can be offered at a reasonable cost.
7. Tools for Measuring New Product Development Performance
• Measuring performance of NPD process can help company improve its innovation strategy and process. Measures of NPD performance can help management:
-identify which projects met their goals and why,
-benchmark the organization’s performance compared to that of competitors, or to the organization’s own prior performance,
-improve resource allocation and employee compensation, and
-refine future innovation strategies
-Important to use multiple measures to provide fair representation
• New Product Development Process Metrics include:
-What was the average cycle time (time-to-market) for development projects? How did this cycle time vary for projects characterized as breakthrough, platform, or derivative projects?
-What percentage of development projects undertaken within the last five years met all or most of the deadlines set for the project?
-What percentage of development projects undertaken within the last five years stayed within budget?
-What percentage of development projects undertaken within the last five years resulted in a completed product?
• Overall Innovation Performance measures include:
-What is the firm’s return on innovation? (This measure assesses the ratio of the firm’s total profits from new products to its total expeditures, including research and development costs, the costs of retooling and staffing production facilities, and initial commercialization and marketing costs.)
-What is the percentage of projects that achieve their sales goals?
-What percentage of revenues are generated by products developed within the last five years?
-What is the firm’s ratio of successful projects to its total project portfolio?
