Product Development Projects Research Articles

Developing innovation competences in engineering students: a comparison of two approaches

ABSTRACT The gap between industry needs and engineering graduates’ competences is being tackled by project-based courses, which also help to develop key innovation competences to address current societal challenges. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding about what innovation competences are developed through the different types of project-based courses. This study discusses innovation competences development in these courses with the aim of understanding how to better design educational strategies to improve them. Through content analysis, we compare the outcomes of two groups of Telecom Engineering students undergoing a capstone course following a classical product development project approach and a challenge-based course using Design Thinking. Results show that both course types contribute to developing innovation competences. Nevertheless, depending on the chosen pedagogy some competences are developed further. The traditional project-based course demonstrates better results in Planning and Managing Projects. Creativity, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship are more developed through a challenge-based approach combined with Design Thinking.

Evolving technology trends and regulatory pathways in the tissue engineered product space

<div class="authors authors-lg"><div class="author"><div class="author-img"><img src="https://cdn.insights.bio/uploads/WF-ConfPhoto3.jpg copy.png" data-image="1"></div><div class="author-det"> <b>William Fodor</b> received his B.S. degree in Genetics and his Ph.D. degree in Molecular Genetics from The Ohio State University. He then completed his post-doctoral training in Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine (Mentor, R.A. Flavell). Dr. Fodor started his industrial career as a founding scientist of Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. During his tenure at Alexion he directed the xenotransplantation, cell and tissue and organ engineering programs and advanced the program to include a pilot manufacturing facility for cell production. Dr. Fodor then moved to academia as an Associate Professor in the Center for Regenerative Biology at the University of Connecticut where he spent 3 years renovating his research to focus on stem cell biology for tissue repair. Dr. Fodor then returned to industry as Senior Director of Product Development at Viacell Inc., where he was responsible for various stem cell product development projects for hematologic indications as well as islet stem cell applications for diabetes. Following his tenure at Viacell, he continued his career in biotechnology as an independent consultant, serving many clients within the regenerative medicine field. Dr. Fodor’s relationship with Biostage was first as a consultant then as the Chief Scientific Officer, his current role. </div></div></div>

Project Valuation and Risk Assessment in Food Product Development: Evidence from Fuzzy Real Option Valuation

Abstract To survive in today's competitive environment, companies must continuously develop and offer customers new products. To increase the probability of a successful business case of investing in the development of a new product, careful attention must be paid to risk analysis in terms of the present value of future potential income. The article considers an example of the research work of the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, in the framework of which a technical and technological project was developed to produce a new product, like Mediterranean anchovy, from cheaper Baltic sprats. The main goal of this work is to explore the application multi-factor sensitivity and fuzzy real option analysis to the valuation of new product development project. The multivariate analysis of the sensitivity of the financial model of the greenfield production project described in this article revealed the main risk groups, as well as their degree of influence on the assessment of the Net Present Value of the project by a potential investor. The use of Fuzzy Real Option Valuation made it possible to evaluate the project with uncertain parameters, as well as to calculate the potential upside from preliminary refinement of parameters to eliminate negative scenarios. The described approach is applicable to risk assessment of new food product development and allows investors to make a more informed decision about participation in such projects.

Configurational Paths to Generating Knowledge Benefit through Customer Participation

Involving customers in the new product development process has been found to create knowledge benefit for the firm. However, the different roads leading to a firm’s knowledge benefit through configurations of which new product development stage customers are engaged in, a firm’s internal co-creation-related capabilities, and the external environment have yet to be specified. To explore the alternative configurational paths to generating knowledge benefit through customer participation, a state-of-the-art fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis is applied to a sample of 181 new product development projects. The results reveal six different configurations to generate knowledge benefit in the new product development process and yield useful suggestions for obtaining knowledge benefit through customer participation.

How Overfunding and Category Spanning Affect Release and Quality of Crowdfunded Products

In this paper, we employ data on crowdfunded video game development projects to study the effects of overfunding on product release and customer-perceived product quality as well as the moderating effect of the product’s category spanning. We find that overfunding is generally more beneficial for products spanning fewer categories. Overfunding increases the probability that low-category-spanning products are released but has no effect on the release probability of high-category-spanning products. We further find that high levels of overfunding increase customer-perceived product quality for low-category-spanning products but that overfunding exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with customer-perceived product quality for high-category-spanning products. Our study is among the first to connect fundraising success with the subsequent outcomes of crowdfunded product development projects and contributes to our emerging understanding of the role of categories in crowdfunding.

PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION PROCESS IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

AbstractRequirements engineering and requirements management are essential sub-processes of product development and are an integrated part of virtually all product development models and industrial process descriptions. Proprietary and context specific processes for working with requirements are used in industrial design practice. However, these are not appropriately reflected in existing process models for product development. Existing standards describe the content and generation of requirements documents but not their integration in the product development process.The study is based on a retrospective analysis of a set of representative real-world product development projects from automotive industry and rail industry. Comparing the processes downstream the milestone “release of PRD”, it was found that subsequent processes to manage requirements and specifications do not differ much with regard to industrial context. Based on this, a model for the product requirements specification (PRS) process is proposed which addresses the gap.

SIMULTANEOUS DEFINITION OF KEY CHARACTERISTICS IN ORDER TO FACILITATE ROBUST DESIGN IN EARLY PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT STAGES

AbstractThe success of complex product development projects strongly depends on the clear definition of target factors that allow a reliable statement about the fulfilment of the product requirements. In the context of tolerancing and robust design, Key Characteristics (KCs) have been established for this purpose and form the basis for all downstream activities. In order to integrate the activities related to the KC definition into product development as early as possible, the often vaguely formulated requirements must be translated into quantifiable KCs. However, this is primarily a manual process, so the results strongly depend on the experience of the design engineer.In order to overcome this problem, a novel computer-aided approach is presented, which automatically derives associated functions and KCs already during the definition of product requirements. The approach uses natural language processing and formalized design knowledge to extract and provide implicit information from the requirements. This leads to a clear definition of the requirements and KCs and thus creates a founded basis for robustness evaluation at the beginning of the concept design stage. The approach is exemplarily applied to a window lifter.

Fostering healthcare innovation: a qualitative study of dental implant product development by Thai university researchers

PurposeThis study investigated the conditions required to foster healthcare innovation. Due to the limited research and development (R&amp;D) capability of the Thai private sector, universities are increasingly expected to be emerging sources of healthcare products. However, the lack of experience in research commercialization requires that whether and how Thai university researchers can serve this mission be explored.Design/methodology/approachA promising dental implant product development project was investigated using the single-case research methodology. In-depth interviews were conducted with three key members involved in this innovative project. Questions concerning how a team of university researchers could embark on and overcome the obstacles encountered during their entrepreneurial project were asked. Based on the conceptual foundation of academic entrepreneurship, primary and additional secondary data were analyzed to acquire knowledge of academic entrepreneurship in healthcare in an emerging economy.FindingsHealthcare inequality has generated entrepreneurial initiatives by healthcare researchers to develop low-cost dental implants. However, their efforts have been insufficient to progress to the commercialization stage. An informal relationship among socially oriented partners, including interdisciplinary experts, not-for-profit-oriented manufacturers and early adopters contributed to this project's success.Originality/valueTo foster healthcare innovation, the authors’ micro-level evidence of a socially oriented partnership on an informal basis indicates the need for inter-professional governance that maintains a cross-organizational environment between healthcare researchers and external parties. The future contributions to innovation management by healthcare professionals should be enhanced. A socially entrepreneurial model of healthcare innovation is suggested for further consideration as an enabling policy option for inter-professional partnership in emerging economies.

A lean view of lean

A lean view of lean

Integration of Agile Approaches in SME’s Product Development: Demand Analysis and Concept Development

In times of a complex, uncertain and dynamic world with increasingly faster product life cycles agile approaches in the early phase of product development are demanded in small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s). Despite the high demand, there is still no generally valid and need-specific solution concept for the integration of agile approaches due to different company specific requirements such as the level of maturity, experience and application purposes. Within this research, the question about the actual needs as well as the corresponding design of a concept for integrating agile approaches in product development for SME requirements is tackled. In order to identify existing challenges in the field of agile product development an empirical study with eleven mechanical engineering companies is conducted and analyzed. By using agglomerative-hierarchical clustering, three distinct types of SME’s with similar needs are structured. As a result, this research proposes a systematic procedure, enabling SME’s to be clustered by their needs and enable the integration of agile approaches through a problem-oriented roadmap with specified recommendation of actions. Enhancing the integration and application of agile approaches effectively in product development projects, the level of agility appropriate to the situation and needs must be identified and introduced. Therefore, the potential that arises from the process-oriented support of the product development teams in the early phase of innovation projects will be outlined. Keywords: agile approaches, needs analysis, small and medium sized enterprises, clustering, product development, mechanical engineering

Land capability evaluation and classification of Obosi Land in Anambra State Nigeria

Land capability evaluation and classification of Obosi land was carried out on an approximately total area of 25.58km2 using the map of the area. The aims of the study were to map out the soils of Obosi, classify them for suitability and sustainability for agricultural production and other land use development projects. Auger sample and profile pit samples were collected and examined. Using morphology and topography of the surveyed area, three mapping units; MUI-lowland areas, MUII- upland areas and MUIII-gullied areas were established. The result of the study indicated the textural class of the soils to be sandy loam, except for upland areas in Auger 1 were the textural class were loamy sand. The particle sizes range from 50gkg-1-90gkg-1 clay, 50-90gkg-1 silt, 130-590gkg-1 fine sand and 310-650gkg-1 sand. The pH of the soils varies from slightly acidity to slightly alkaline and was fairly uniform throughout the depths. The exchangeable bases, CEC, TEA, SAR and ESP of the soils were found to be low and below their critical level for crop production the base saturation value of the soils range from 22.28-99.21%. The low land areas and the upland areas were found to be suitable for arable crops. They fall under the suitability class S2 (suitable) and the capability class 11. Their major constraint on agricultural production is low fertility status. The gullied areas MUIII were found within the uplands and low-land areas. They fall under the non-suitability class NS (not suitable) and the capability class vi. The prominent limitation of this unit is erosion hazard. The area cannot be used in their present state without serious reclamation activities. The soils were classified as mixed isothermic kandic argiudult using the USDA soil Taxonomy and correlated as eutric ferralsols by FAO-WAB classification. Generally the soils need to be upgraded in soil nutrients through soil organic matter application and reclamation processes to produce maximally.

Application of risk-based fuzzy decision support systems in new product development: An R-VIKOR approach

Innovative manufacturing firms strive to sustain and enhance their competitive advantages by running a range of new product development (NPD) projects in a consistent manner. The capital and time required to execute the NPD projects have substantially increased over the past years. This magnified the risk-aversion behavior of R&D managers and has increased their sensitivity towards the underlying risk of NPD projects. In particular, the R&D departments have recently started to proactively assess the accuracy of ambiguous information that is extensively used in preliminary market study and customer requirements analysis. Thanks to its high performance in dynamic environments, the R-numbers method can be employed to capture and analyze the risk of fuzzy numbers in a variety of decision making models. To tackle the complexity of such analysis, this paper proposes a novel risk-based fuzzy VIKOR (R-VIKOR) methodology. Using the interpretive structural modeling, the risk factors are first classified to identify and rank the existing critical risk factors of NPD projects. The ultimate goal of this study is to develop a practical yet simple decision support system tool that enables the R&D managers to effectively examine the riskiness of fuzzy information and assess the relevant risk factors. A real-world case study is presented to test and examine the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed risk management method.

Success factors in product development projects: expert opinions

Successful product development is a common challenge for technical and management experts. The increasing pressure on time reduction and cost savings while enhancing product features, requires rethinking project management methods. This paper analyses the opinions of product development experts about the success factors of product development projects. A voluntary online survey was used for data collection in 2020. The study confirms that development engineers, test engineers, project managers, and product development managers have partially different approaches to important success factors. Precise regulation and focus on collaboration are considered essential topics. The results show that knowledge management and collaboration with other organizational units must be improved. Enhancing the interpretation of project success and forcing the better utilization of lessons learned or module information can contribute to sustainable success.

How does open innovation contribute to the firm's dynamic capabilities?

A pressing management issue exists to understand how firms can develop dynamic capabilities (DC) through processes such as open innovation (OI). Our study aims to expand knowledge in this area by explicating the underlying mechanisms of OI that contribute to a firm's DC. Adopting a microfoundations perspective, we examined three separate new product development projects in a UK manufacturer over a period of two years. Our findings demonstrate that manufacturing firms can exploit technological and market-based knowledge resources during OI activities and we have developed a process model to reflect these findings. We were able to identify three underlying mechanisms of OI: realization, engagement, and appropriation, that contribute to the creation of firm resources and the firm's DC. Our study reveals that each mechanism links the process of OI to a firm's DC by sequentially and reciprocally altering the firm's abilities for sensing and seizing opportunities. This improved understanding of the microfoundations of OI enables us to explain how external knowledge search and the ensuing knowledge appropriation can correct misalignment between a firm's current capabilities and its future market opportunities, and, thus, enhance the firm's DC.

Clustering product development project organization based on trust and core teams

The new product development (PD) project is a complex network of communications involving trust relationships among teams. Trust is prominent, influencing the team positions and organizational performance indirectly. To manage the coordination complexity in PD projects, in this paper, we build a model of mutual trust among teams and further identify core teams to optimize the PD organizational network structure. First, we identified the technical interdependency and emotional closeness that influence the transmission behavior of the tie strength in the PD organizational network. Then, we examined how the presence of a common third party in the organizational network affects the trust transferability between interdependent teams. We modelled the structural similarity based on the trust transferability. To identify the core teams, which typically have high importance as well as diverse knowledge in the organizational network, we improved the LeaderRank centrality with trust transferability related to common recipients/sources to evaluate the importance of teams and present the team attributes (i.e. expertise) diversity. To build the group around core teams, we used the core teams as the input parameter (i.e. the initial clustering seeds) of the K-means clustering algorithms. The clustering results reinforce several managerial practices in an industrial example, including how trust transferability impacts the optimal organizational network structure and how to build an organizational network structure based on core teams.

Measuring technological uncertainty and technological complexity: scale development and an assessment of reliability and validity

PurposeTechnological uncertainty and technological complexity are the two dominant characteristics of new product development (NPD) projects that have a negative influence on NPD performance, relying on a strong theoretical argumentation based on organizational information processing theory. The purpose of this study is the development of reliable and valid scales for the measurement of technological uncertainty and technological complexity, especially in the context of the discontinuous technological change of digitization.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses material from 44 in-depth interviews, which has been transferred into a questionnaire, and survey data from 166 respondents from the German automotive industry in charge of the development and production of electric and electronic technologies (including software). In this context, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are used to test the developed scales for reliability and validity.FindingsIn this context, it can be stated that the developed scales affirm reliability and validity sufficiently. Interestingly, novelty, regarded as key item for measuring technological uncertainty, has to be dropped, as the factor loadings are under the cut-off of 0.40. Moreover, resulting items for measuring technological uncertainty and technological complexity do not deviate significantly from those discussed in previous study before the discontinuous technological change of digitization occurred.Originality/valueThis paper provides value for the discussion on how to measure technological uncertainty and technological complexity, especially in times of radical technological changes.

Supplier involvement in product development: Challenges and mitigating mechanisms from a supplier perspective

This article explores challenges that suppliers experience when being involved in customers’ product development projects, and how these challenges can be mitigated. It presents a framework of supplier involvement in product development involving four dimensions: People-Process-Tools/Technology-Interaction. The framework consists of 24 challenges and associated mitigating mechanisms. The article concludes that suppliers must be aware of the challenges to ensure that proper internal capabilities are in place within their organizations. It also argues that customers should be aware of the challenges to provide best possible prerequisites for suppliers to ensure successful project outcomes.

Product development and project-based learning in Mechatronics, in the context of digitization and sustainability

Engineering projects affect many of the UN’s sustainability goals. The development and design of new products and systems using a circular economy perspective is an important challenge towards a more sustainable society. Product development projects have common process characteristics, but methodologies, tools and methods differ for developing hardware (mechanical and electrical) or developing software. In Mechatronics such methods need to be combined, and product development and project-based learning is well suited for teaching and learning within Mechatronics, in addition to technical specialization subjects within both mechanical, electrical and software engineering. It is also suited for developing consciousness for sustainability. At UiA project-based learning is a part of several courses. This article draw out some experiences from teaching two different project-based product development courses the last two years, one at Bachelor and one at Master level. The courses are viewed as products, and product development is used as methodology for developing teaching and learning as well. The aim is continuous improvement of the learning outcome of these courses. This is in accordance with the SoTL-approach, Scholarship of teaching and learning.

Supply chain design during product development: a systematic literature review

This paper explores how supply chains can be designed during product development (PD) through systematically reviewing 143 peer-reviewed journal articles written in English. The findings indicate that practitioners can perform 14 supply chain design (SCD) activities during PD. These activities are grouped into levels and areas, and a model is developed that interrelates SCD with nine product characteristics. Therewith, scholars are given a deep insight into the literature on SCD during PD. The paper also provides a framework for developing company- and project-specific checklists that can be used for multiple purposes, including planning, performing, or evaluating SCD activities before, during, or after PD projects. The implementation of the framework, according to the characteristics of a manufacturer and its PD projects, constitutes an opportunity for the creation of resilient supply chains.

Role of supplier involvement and project leader in SNPD: a conceptual model and exploratory case study

PurposeThis paper focusses on the factors to sustainable product development (SNPD) projects success. More specifically, it aims to explore and understand the role of supplier involvement (SI) within SNPD. Additionally, it investigates how effective project leaders can facilitate effective supplier involvement and enhance focal firm's ability to successfully carry out sustainable achievement in product development.Design/methodology/approachA theoretical framework among SI, SNPD, project leader's personality and leadership style has been established. Six interviews collected from different industries are used to further explore the relationship among SI, SNPD, leader's personality and leadership style.FindingsThe difficulties in managing suppliers, the timing and extent of supplier involvement, communication method and frequency, as well as supplier contribution and challenge in SNPD has been summarized. The interviews also confirmed that effective leaders who possess certain personality traits enable appropriate supplier involvement, promote prosperous SNPD and enhance the relationship between SI and SNPD performance by allowing individual members, teams and organizations to function well.Originality/valueSustainable new product development (SNPD) has been recognized as one of the key factors to achieve environmental and economic success. The paper explores the role of supplier involvement in SNPD project and emphasizes the role of project leaders in the process.