Next Generation Technologies for Improving Product Planning and Development: An Industry Perspective

Abstract

Successful product planning and development revolves around great innovation, effective implementation of new ideas, cross-functional collaboration, and right decision making before translating ideas into a right product portfolio, features and technology roadmaps, and finally launching them as successful products. Managing the product planning processes offers multiple challenges in the absence of a healthy idea pipe line, a good visibility into market and competition dynamics, lack of cross functional collaboration and finally, absence of an integrated process and system to support the complex information interplay. Organizations have, in past, adopted different process models and technologies ranging from product data management (PDM), product lifecycle management (PLM), knowledge management and collaboration solutions to address above challenges. However, there is a significant opportunity to leverage next generation technologies such as digital social networking (DSN), cloud computing, and big data management in conjunction with the traditional technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of product planning and development. This paper presents an industry perspective on the major potential areas where these next generation technologies can be leveraged in the early stages of design, particularly product planning. Specific examples from automotive design and manufacturing are used to illustrate the complementary nature of traditional technologies and the emerging web-based technologies. The paper discusses major industry trends and reviews academic research in this area, and concludes with the authors’ point of view on how the combination of these technologies can be leveraged for developing a profitable product portfolio. The paper also highlights specific research issues from technological and business process standpoint that need to be addressed for successful integration. The potential benefits of such integration include productivity improvements, improved product offerings, first time right & on time product launches.