New product development process and total quality management

Abstract

Summary form only given. The total quality management (TQM) paradigm provides an approach for achieving continuous improvement. Critical for this are (i) a good understanding of the new product development (NPD) process and (ii) defining suitable metrics to assess the NPD process. Once this is done, data needs to be collected to assess the quality of the NPD process in a firm. Based on analysis of this data, actions to achieve improvements can be initiated. We apply the 3-level model of TQM to NPD process. The application process involves identification of various process elements at all three levels, defining relevant notions of quality for each element, and finally developing appropriate metrics to assess the performance of the NPD process. We provide sample metrics at each level. To establish preliminary relevance of the proposed integrated model and its performance metrics, we examined an NPD project in a medium sized high technology firm from the telecommunication sector. We briefly discuss the case study methodology and our findings. We conclude by indicating areas for further research to develop effective operational templates of this model.