Activities In Product Development Process Research Articles

Assessing the New Product Development Process activities in Peruvian medium-sized manufacturing companies

The study focuses on the relationship between the New Product Development Process activities and the success of the new products. Research on this topic is still scarce in emerging countries. From a survey of medium-sized manufacturing companies in Peru, an OLogit regression was used on 140 companies in the Lima and Callao regions. The results indicate that most companies carried out these activities, but only three out of eighteen are decisive for the success of the new product, which minimizes some that are considered key by the theory. This means that this process may not have been well structured or managed. The findings are important not only to improve the efficiency of innovation management, but also to support public policies.

Images as qualitative visual references: recommended image boards for product development process activities

Image Boards (IB) are visual reference tools and their application in the Product Development Process (PDP) is currently concentrated in the early project stages, especially in marketing and industrial design.On the other hand, the current facilities for creating, capturing, selecting, assembling, and sharing images using electronic devices increase the possibility of applying IB in other PDP activities. The aims of this study were to identify the PDP activities in which the IB contributed with information that promote alignment, comparison, or visual inspiration. For this was employed a double quantitative and associative analysis between the PDP activities, images and the IB. The results indicated that the use of images could be beneficial for different PDP activities. Moreover, different PDP activities can be associated with different types of IB. In this sense, the use of IB can offer advantages for multidisciplinary areas of PDP, going beyond design and marketing.

Managing concurrent execution of multiple activities in product development process

Many companies adopt concurrent engineering in their product-development projects in order to reduce time to market. Concurrent engineering requires careful management, since the uncertainty of transferred information leads to rework and renders a development process complex. Most of the existing studies on concurrent engineering have analyzed overlapping between two activities. The present study expanded the research scope by modeling the developmental process of the concurrent execution of multiple activities as the result of management decisions, the overlapping ratio, and the information transfer frequency. When multiple activities are overlapped, it is more difficult to model a development process, since the uncertainty of cascaded information has impacts on many activities. The quantitative model developed in the present study provides insights into the uncertainty of information and the product-development process. Based on the generalized process model for multiple-activity overlapping, the optimal decision to minimize project duration was considered. As a solution to the dilemma of the high computational burden of considering all feasible decision sets, this paper proposes a myopic heuristic. The project management heuristic proposed in this paper is intended to assist managers in the decision-making process, as well as reducing the intermediate deadlines in project main plan.

An Optimal Composition Strategy for Knowledge Service Component Based on Flexible Tracking Particle Swarm Algorithm

It is urgent to combine knowledge resources with manufacturing business processes to form a knowledge service in the cloud mode, so as to provide intelligent support for business activities in product development process. The main challenge of knowledge resource service, however, is how to rapidly construct the complex resource service system and respond promptly to the changeable service requirements in the business process, which is similar to the software system modeling using a component in software engineering. This paper is concerned with an optimal composition framework (OCF) of knowledge resource service, including service decomposition, component encapsulation, and optimal composition. Firstly, the typical business processes are decomposed into the dynamic knowledge element (DKE), and all kinds of knowledge resources and service behaviors are encapsulated into the reusable resource service components (RSC). Then, a multicomponent optimal composition mathematical model is presented, which transforms the problem of component composition into a multiobjective optimization problem. On this basis, a heuristic algorithm with the adaptive mutation probability is introduced to composite the multigranularity service component dynamically and robustly. Finally, the case of component composition for maintenance resource service is studied and the simulation results are provided to verify the efficacy of the proposed model and algorithms.

Análise das práticas de gestão PDP em empresas de um polo industrial de revestimento cerâmico

O artigo analisa a gestão do processo de desenvolvimento de produtos (PDP) em uma amostra de empresas de revestimento cerâmico do Polo de Santa Gertrudes-SP, focando as práticas adotadas e os problemas dessa gestão. Realizou-se uma pesquisa de levantamento (survey), por meio de visitas e entrevistas em 20 de um universo de 36 empresas, de diferentes portes, sediadas no polo, seguida da compilação e análise estatística dos dados. As análises de grupo e de correlação apontaram a existência de dois grupos distintos de empresas com relação às características gerais diferenciados principalmente com relação à formalização das atividades do PDP. Observou-se também que, no geral, as empresas são pouco estruturadas com relação à gestão do PDP, utilizam poucas ferramentas de apoio a essa gestão e para o desenvolvimento de novos produtos dependem tecnologicamente da capacidade de inovação dos fornecedores, principalmente dos produtores de esmaltes (colorifícios).

Social network analysis aided product development project management: IC Substrates case study

Article history: Received October 15 2010 Received in revised form 15 December 2010 Accepted 16 December 2010 Available online 16 December 2010 This paper proposes the social network analysis (SNA), to study interaction among various activities in a product development process (PDP). The implementation of SNA helps to measure the properties of information flow and identifies PDP activities and limitations. The findings of an exploratory research project which explores the potential of SNA, as an improve tool for visually mapping and analyzing the stakeholders relationships found across the IC substrates design/manufacturing’s PDP of the Unimicron Technology Corp. From the findings, the authors prescribe the necessary SNA recommendations to improve the social conditions within the PDP.

Diagnóstico e intervenção em empresas médias: uma proposta de (re)organização das atividades do Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos

O Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos (PDP) pode ser definido como a maneira pela qual uma empresa converte ideias e oportunidades em produtos e serviços. Esse processo exige etapas bem definidas e administração de pessoas e recursos. Nos últimos anos, surgiram modelos referenciais de desenvolvimento que se aperfeiçoaram e incorporaram novas fases no desenvolvimento de produtos, desde a análise do mercado até a descontinuidade do produto. Apesar disso, no que se refere à estruturação do PDP, de um modo geral, as empresas, sobretudo pequenas e médias, não adaptaram facilmente à sua realidade os modelos defendidos nos livros. Claramente, falta uma função de transição entre a prática atual e as propostas teóricas. Baseado na literatura e na prática observada em empresas, este artigo apresenta um método de estruturação das atividades concernentes ao PDP de empresas de bens de manufatura. A proposta contempla a apresentação de um método utilizado para melhoria da integração das atividades. Os métodos utilizados mostram como, na prática, pode ser feita a intervenção em uma empresa de médio porte que deseja organizar seu Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos.

Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Sensitivity Analysis for Selecting the Best Design Concepts during Conceptual Design Stage

Selection of the design concepts is one of the significant activities in product development process. Most of the products are usually failed due to inappropriate decision during the selection of the design concepts at the early stage of product development process. The determination of the greatest selection of design concepts at the conceptual design stage is a crucial decision due to a poor design concept which can never be compensated for by a good detailed design and it will implicate great expense of redesign cost. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is one available method in forming a systematic approach for a single decision maker or a group decision maker, is employed to solve such problem. In this paper, 7 design concepts of wheelchair designs were considered as a case study. The AHP through utilizing Expert Choice software was implemented to determine the most suitable design concept of wheelchair design at the conceptual design stage. The sensitivity analysis was performed to test the stability of the priority ranking and to increase the confidence in the selection of design concepts.

Product development process in the Brazilian autoparts industry: management practices and trends

This paper presents the results of a research survey taken among managers that have responsibility for product development in Brazilian autoparts companies. This research is an investigation about management practices in the product development process (PDP). Some management issues were examined, such as reference models, organisational structure, performance metrics, methods and tools, partnership, and others. In the last decade, this industry underwent a broad process of restructuring, this was especially due to Brazilian economy deregulation, with management implications in PDP as well as in its activities, and the research results show that companies are improving their management practices in PDP. Some of the results are: there is a wide dissemination of PDP reference models, but they are only partly implemented; there is application of methods and tools to problem solving but their integration should be improved; development teams are used to carry out PDP activities; and, matrix organisational structure type is adopted by some companies, but functional structure is still widely used. The study also identified that follow-source projects are the most common type, platform type projects have been adopted for one quarter of the companies, and systemists are the most evolved in PDP management practices among the surveyed companies. Regarding trends, companies address an increasingly reducing number of innovation cycles that require effort to increase development speed, but with no impact on project quality, and there is an expectation that local units will get greater autonomy of product development, especially in those activities where they have the capability.

Analyzing the knowledge management through the product development process

The aim of this paper is to present a model for the analysis to the knowledge management on the organizational processes. Knowledge can be considered an input, an element of transformation, and an output of these processes. In order to maximize the competitive advantage of these processes, it is necessary to manage knowledge in a more structured way. The proposed model is composed of the following elements: contents, processes, infrastructure and knowledge management principles. In this paper the model was applied – through two case studies – in the product development process (PDP) of automotive parts manufacturers. The results showed the lack of awareness about the presence of these knowledge management elements in the everyday activities of PDP and the importance of the integration of these elements to the success of this management.

An activity model of the product development process

The inclusion of certain activities in the product development process (PDP) and their efficient execution have been identified as important factors for new product success. It is therefore important to be able to identify both what activities are present in a particular PDP and what activities should be present. The work reported in the present paper arose from the need to identify these activities as part of a method to evaluate the effectiveness of a company's PDP. Successful application of co-ordination processes, such as scheduling, resource allocation and concurrent engineering, also depends on having a complete representation of the PDP activities. The requirements that a model of the PDP activities should satisfy are identified in the paper. Existing models are reviewed, but none fully meets these requirements. A new generic model of PDP activities has been developed using the IDEF0 structure to derive a set of 18 generic elements against which companies can map their own PDP activities. This model is presented in detail, the results of tests in a number of manufacturing companies are described, and comparisons are made with a number of existing models. The 18 generic elements are found to be sufficient to represent all the test cases.