Innovative Framework to manage New Product Development (NPD) Integrating Additive Manufacturing (AM) and Agile Management

Abstract

The global competition requires from industries New Product Developments (NPD) with innovation, speed and flexibility, which has to be tightly connected with new manufacturing technologies, in order to achieve success and constant growth. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is an emerging technology from Industry 4.0 capable to address such challenges. It provides better and functional product development, promptly allowing running tests and reducing time to market, promoting agility, as a whole. Parallel evolution is in course regarding the theory of Agile Project Management (APM) applied to NPD, especially when conducting development of innovative products and technologies. However, to achieve the whole benefits with such new approaches towards the NPD process, it is necessary to study and understand how to combine AM and APM for improve NPD. The present research proposes an innovative framework to manage NPD with AM, incorporating APM envisioning innovative products, customer involvement and successfully obtaining a final product faster than conventional routes. The proposal is based on a rigorous Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method, which identified the most appropriate practices to be combined to promote a NPD with agility and flexibility when using AM. All concepts and practices were analyzed and systematically organized, generating the proposed framework. The result can be a reference model to companies conjointly adopt AM and APM.