Concept for the Design of an Implementation Process for Continuous Innovation in Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

Dynamic market environments, increasing global competitions as well as requirements from more individual and specific customer wishes promote that manufacturing companies have to focus on continuous innovation in order to build up competitive advantages and to address customer needs. Traditional innovation approaches cannot address these challenges sufficiently. However, the concept of continuous innovation focuses on the ability of a company to continuously improve or renew products or product features during the product usage phase. Currently, manufacturing companies do not have a systematic procedure for implementing continuous innovations. At this point, the publication presents a concept to design an implementation process for continuous innovations.