Model Of New Product Development Process Research Articles

Challenges and Changes to the Product Development Process for Fashion Omnichannel Retailers

This paper focuses on the relatively limited research activity for Fashion Product Development (FPD). This work aims to challenge the traditional FPD theoretical process model within existing academic literature and presents a revised version which is underpinned by the concept of “robust management” derived from the New Product Development (NPD) literature and industry discussion. This new theoretical process model is a more accurate reflection of current practice within the fashion industry. The development of this research is influenced by critically investigating the product development process used by high street omnichannel retailers that develop “own label” fashion clothing, and which distribute products through high street stores and online sales channels as well as having integrated or overlapping service domains. The research examines the process inputs and outputs as well as the planning and management of the process overall and in so doing intends to capture the holistic nature of current industry FPD for omnichannel retailers. The empirical research proceeded using a qualitative approach using semi structured indepth interviews conducted with key informants from market leading retailers. The major findings of the research indicate that a new theoretical contribution to the academic literature field of FPD may be appropriate. The work illustrates the current product development process, documenting the challenges, changes and solutions that have influenced it, specific to omnichannel retailers, whilst identifying the links and parallels from NPD process model structures. This research explores the necessity of product development theoretical models that are specific to business and retail types within the fashion industry and contributes to the nascent theory that has a specific focus on fashion product development.

Design-Led New Product Development in Chinese SMEs

Design-oriented new product development (NPD) has been recognised as beneficial for company growth; however, there is limited reporting on the understanding of its effectiveness in a real-world context especially in Chinese SMEs. This paper aims to explore issues related to the implementation of designer-led NPD in a Chinese SME. An experiment was setup whereby two NPD teams were assigned to conduct NPD concurrently. One of the teams carried out the conventional NPD process model used by the company, and the other adopted the designer-led NPD process model. A metrics tool was built in the form of questionnaires for obtaining the views of the participants. Results indicate that design-led NPD is perceived to be more inclusive of team members’ views, even if the effectiveness of designer-led NPD in Chinese SMEs requires further investigations.

Integrating Product-Service System Tools into New Product Development Processes

Companies must innovate technologically and culturally, if they wish to seek competitiveness and improvement of environmental performance. The actions to be taken require in-depth review and possibly changes in their strategy and business models. The development of a product with less environmental impact can be facilitated by the application of Product-Service Systems (PSS) practices at different NPD process stages. Due to the lack of systematization for the application of PSS practices into new product development (NPD) processes, the present work aims to collect methods and tools, and suggest its application, with the ultimate target to allow companies to be more competitive and provide sustainable products and related services. In this sense, a systematic literature review was made to collect and interpret available data on PSS. The next step was the classification of PSS practices according to the NDP process phase in which they could be applied. The final step was the selection of an application example to illustrate the application of PSS practices as inserted in a so-called 'enhanced' NPD process model. Such approach may serve as a bridge to allow the flow of language, data and tools from the world of sustainability and its evaluation to the product managers.

Performance and time to market: accelerating cycle time with overlapping stages

Windows of opportunity and product life cycles have been shortening, placing pressure on firms to stay competitive. Many firms have responded to this pressure by setting goals of reducing new product development (NPD) cycle time and/or improving product performance, often by setting up fuzzy gates between stages, cross-functional teams, or both. This study examines the tradeoff between product performance and time to market, focusing on the effect of overlapping stages during which marketing, design, and manufacturing engineering are jointly working on performance improvement, An NPD process model comprising a design stage, a process stage, and an intermediary overlap stage representing the interaction between design and process personnel is developed. Key findings include the following. (1) Overlapping stages reduces time to market, but the marginal returns to lengthening the overlap stage yield progressively smaller improvements in time to market. (2) The longer the market window is open, the less is the pressure to rush the product to market, and product performance can be further improved by leaving the product longer in development. (3) It is better to keep the product longer in development rather than accelerate time to market if the base product performance is low. (4) If the productivity of the overlap stage is increased, it is more profitable to keep the product in development longer and boost product performance at launch than to rush the product to market quicker. (5) The greater the market power the firm possesses, the faster it should bring the product to market, as long as product performance and sustainability of market power are not substantially reduced. A set of propositions is derived from the model, and is tested in a small-scale empirical study on firms in the automobile and automotive supply industry. The results are largely supportive of the propositions. Management implications and recommendations for further research are presented.