Main content of this chapter
Rapid changes in technology, communication and market demands put considerable pressure on companies to become more effective and efficient in product development. With the in-depth understanding of the success factors of new product development, a series of new product processes suitable for specific situations have emerged. This chapter provides an overview of a variety of new product processes, including gate management processes, concurrent engineering, integrated product development, lean, and agile. This chapter describes the advantages and limitations of each process, and the specific context in which each corresponds.Summary
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Product development process——gateway management process, which pays great attention to effective entrance decision-making and combined management. Life/kill decisions are made at each stage of product development to prevent waste of more resources for worthless products. In addition, it is necessary to prioritize multiple products and take advantage of the combination of enterprise resources. It is mainly used in automobiles, manufacturing, and industries with large investment scales and high risks. Its basic model is shown in the figure below:
The main stages of the gate management process are:
- Discovery: Find new opportunities and new product ideas.
- Screening: Initial assessment of market opportunity, technology needs, and availability of capabilities.
- Project approval analysis: a key stage built on the screening stage, including more in-depth technical, market and commercial feasibility analysis.
- Development: Product design, prototyping, design for manufacturability, manufacturing readiness and market planning.
- Testing and Revision: All aspects of the product and its commercialization plan are tested, and all assumptions and conclusions are revised.
- Launch: Complete commercialization of the product, including scale manufacturing and commercial launch.
The number of stages divided in the above process can be adjusted according to the actual situation.A stage is a defined area in the overall product development process that includes:
- Activities: The work that the project leader and team members must complete in accordance with the project plan.
- Comprehensive analysis: Through cross-functional communication, the project leader and team members comprehensively analyze the results of all functional activities.
- Deliverable: Presentation of comprehensive analysis results, which is what the team must complete and deliver when entering the gate.
A gate is a defined point in the product development process. At this point in the process, key decisions need to be made about the future of the project, including:- Deliverable: Input to Gate Review Point. The deliverables are the result of the actions of the previous stage and are determined in advance. At each gate there is a standard list of deliverables.
- Criteria: The yardstick by which projects are judged to determine whether or not to pass and to prioritize projects. These criteria are usually designed as a scoring scale that includes both financial and qualitative criteria.
- Output: The result of the gate review. Clear outputs must be given at the gate, including the decision (pass/shoot/shelve/redo) and the path to the next phase (approved project plan, next gate date and deliverables).
The advantages and limitations of the gate management process are shown in the following figure:
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Integrated Product Development (Integrated Product Development) is a set of models, concepts and methods of product development, which is defined as: "systematically and comprehensively apply the results and concepts of different functional systems, effectively and efficiently develop new products and satisfy customers The way of requirements" is developed from the evolution of waterfall process and concurrent engineering. It was IBM that first put IPD into practice. At present, Huawei in China is a loyal user of IPD. The schematic diagram of the integrated product development framework is as follows:
The core idea of IPD has the following points:
- New product development is an investment decision: IPD emphasizes effective portfolio analysis for product development, setting checkpoints during the development process, and deciding whether to continue, suspend, terminate or change the direction of the project through periodic reviews.
- Market-based development: IPD emphasizes that product innovation must be based on market demand and competition analysis. For this reason, IPD takes the correct definition of product concept and market demand as the first step in the process, and does things right from the beginning.
- Cross-departmental and cross-system collaboration: Use a cross-departmental Product Development Team (PDT) to achieve the goal of bringing products to market as soon as possible through effective communication, coordination, and decision-making.
- Asynchronous development mode, also known as concurrent engineering: through strict planning and accurate interface design, many original follow-up activities are carried out in advance, which can shorten the time to market.
- Structured process: The relative uncertainty of product development projects requires the development process to find a balance between unstructured and overly structured.
- Reusability: Use common building blocks (common building block, CBB) to improve the efficiency of product development.
- Continuously improve the design.
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During new product development, the following potential sources of waste exist:
- chaotic work environment;
- lack of available information;
- Lack of clear prioritization;
- Communication barriers between different functions;
- poor definition of product requirements;
- lack of early consideration of manufacturability;
- over-design;
- Too many unproductive meetings;
- Too many emails.
In view of the waste of resources mentioned above, James Morgan and Jeffrey Lake proposed lean product development based on the lean method pioneered by Toyota, and gave the following suggestions for new product development:
- Establish value defined by customers and remove waste that does not add value;
- Invest more energy in the front end of product development, fully explore all possible solutions, and maximize the design space;
- Create a high-level product development process;
- Implement rigorous standardized processes to reduce variability, create flexibility, and produce predictable results;
- Establish a chief engineer system, who is responsible for the integration of the development process from beginning to end;
- Balancing functional expertise and cross-functional integration;
- Cultivate the ability of each engineer;
- Fully integrate suppliers and incorporate them into the product development system;
- Establish the concept of learning and continuous improvement;
- Create an organizational culture that supports excellence and continuous improvement;
- Adopt technology that matches people and processes;
- Align the entire organization with simple visual communication;
- Make good use of effective standardization tools and organizational learning tools.
The advantages and limitations of lean product development, as shown in the following diagram:
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Agile methodology is the process of iterative product development by self-organizing teams in a collaborative environment. Among them, through gradual iterative work steps, the team can deal with unexpected things, which is also called a sprint. Agile development is widely used in the software industry. Unlike the hardware industry, the software industry is characterized by constant change.
The values of agile product development are as follows:
- Individuals and interactions trump processes and tools;
- Working software is better than comprehensive documentation;
- Customer cooperation trumps contract negotiation;
- Responding to change is better than following a plan.
The 12 principles of agile product development are:
- Our top priority is to satisfy our customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software;
- Even late in development, we welcome changes in requirements. Agile processes turn these changes into a competitive advantage for clients;
- Deliver working software frequently, every few weeks or months, with as short an interval as possible;
- During the project, business personnel and developers work together;
- Solicit motivated people to develop projects, provide them with the environment and support they need, and trust them to do their jobs well;
- The most time-saving and effective information transfer method in the development team is face-to-face communication;
- Working software is the main measure of progress;
- Agile processes facilitate sustainable development. Sponsors, developers and users should always maintain a fixed pace of progress;
- Continue to focus on advanced technology and excellent design to improve agility;
- Simplicity - the art of minimizing agency work is the foundation of everything;
- Only self-organizing teams can make the best architecture and design;
- Teams regularly reflect on how to improve efficiency and adjust workflows.
The agile process is as follows:
interpret
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The New Product Process is defined as the structured series of tasks and workflows a company undertakes to continuously transform an initial idea into a marketable product or service.
Relevant interpretation:
The details of the business activities of the new product development project are shown in the figure below:
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Concurrent engineering is a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and related processes, including manufacturing and support. This approach enables developers to consider all elements of the product lifecycle from concept to implementation, from quality, cost, schedule to user needs from the very beginning.
The basic premise of concurrent engineering is based on the following two concepts
- 1. All elements in the product life cycle (functionality, manufacturability, assembly, testing, maintenance, environmental marketing to final disposal and recycling) are considered one by one in the early design phase.
- 2. Considering that promoting processes in parallel can significantly improve productivity and product quality, design activities should be carried out simultaneously.
Concurrent engineering features: Parallel crossover and early start of work.
Related interpretation:
Concurrent engineering generally uses modeling and simulation technology to achieve design information transfer, pre-release verification of each link, and receive feedback information from each link to make corrections to shorten the development cycle on the basis of reducing development risks. A detailed example is shown in the figure below:
