Simulation of the New Product Development Process for Performance Improvement

The trend of vertical disintegration in semiconductor industry promotes more and more collaborative e-commerce applications for interchanging business information and facilitating timely and efficient communication between the specialized firms. While previous literature focused on the operational performance enhancement of e-commerce system (ECS) usage, this study contributed to increase understandings on the performance of using ECS to facilitate new product development (NPD) process through combining qualitative and quantitative methods in a two-phase case study. This study found that the specialized firms mainly leveraged the collaborative e-commerce systems to facilitate the ”technical dialogue” between design and process engineers to conquer the technological knowledge integration issues in NPD process. With support by real transactional data, ECS usage has positive impacts on NPD performance and the design-related ECS accounts for the most of performance variance. In general, the integrated device manufacturing and the fabless customers have different effects of using ECS on NPD performance. With respect to the firm's location, the eastern companies obtain better NPD performance than the western companies by using those ECS. This study suggests that a foundry company should develop different ECS services to support various customers in terms of organizational type and geographical location.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effect of collaborative innovation networks on new product development (NPD) performance in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It also investigates the mediating role of business model innovation and moderating role of collaboration experience and external information technology (IT) capability in the above relationship.Design/methodology/approachTo test the research hypotheses about the relationships above, survey data were collected from 209 Chinese manufacturing SMEs. Multiple hierarchical regressions analysis was used to examine the hypotheses.FindingsResults reveal that collaborative innovation networks have positive impacts on NPD performance in SMEs. Moreover, business model innovation mediates and collaboration experience and external IT capability positively moderate the relationship between collaborative innovation networks and NPD performance in SMEs.Originality/valueThis study paints a more complete picture of the relationship between collaborative innovation networks and NPD performance in SMEs and advances the understanding of how and when SMEs enhance their NPD performance through collaborative innovation networks.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to identify firm groups pursuing different configurations of customer-, entrepreneurial-, and information technology (IT) orientation and to compare their new product development (NPD) capability and NPD performance.Design/methodology/approach– Hierarchical cluster analysis was used on the sample of 156 firms on the basis of their mix of customer-, entrepreneurial-, and IT- orientation. Then, analysis of variance was used to compare the groups’ NPD capability (NPDCAP), NPD process efficiency (NPDPROC), new product effectiveness (NPEFF), and new product financial performance (NPPERF).Findings– Of the seven strategy configurations posited, four emerge and two unexpected configurations are revealed. Overall, firms simultaneously pursuing multiple strategic orientations have higher NPDCAP, NPEFF, and NPPERF. Interestingly, all six strategy groups have equally low levels of NPDPROC.Practical implications– To enhance NPDCAP and NPD performance, managers should consider more complex strategy configurations that act in complementary ways, in particular, customer-orientation complemented by either entrepreneurial- and/or IT-orientation. Moreover, more attention is needed to improving NPDPROC, as achieving gains in this area would contribute positively to firm performance.Originality/value– This study presents initial evidence that, at least for firms in Thailand, resources must be configured by pursuing several strategic orientations simultaneously to enhance their dynamic capabilities in NPD, a strategic issue that has not been given much attention in previous literature.

Past research provides evidence of a wide range of antecedent variables to explain new product development performance. The reported determinants are a combination of strategic, development process, organizational, and market factors. However, these research efforts are fragmented and focus on one or two key factors. Researchers look at this issue from a narrow disciplinary perspective. So the results are quite discipline-biased. Apart from the lack of a multi-disciplinary approach, there is a real gap in subjecting these factors to rigorous empirical tests, and incorporate modern proven best practices of world class innovative companies to guide practitioners in their innovation journey. There is a real need to broaden the range of factors considered and develop an integrated model with high predictive power to guide new product development (NPD) efforts. This paper aims to address this research issue. In this research study, four key factors have been identified in modelling financial performance in NPD. They are strategic fit and shared vision, market orientation, stimulus and slack time, organization for collaboration and communication. Regression analysis was performed to validate their importance and estimate the parameters of these four key factors. The result shows that all these four factors are statistically significant in determining financial performance in NPD. This framework can be used practically to assist managers to improve in their NPD efforts so as to achieve higher financial return on investment.

By means of 198 questionnaires and structural equation modeling (SEM) approach, this paper aims to investigate the mechanism and the paths of the interaction among quality planning, knowledge process and new product development performance. The findings indicate that quality planning has a significant direct positive effect on the knowledge process of new product development (NPD); knowledge process has a significant direct positive effect on the NPD performance; and quality planning has a significant indirect positive effect on the NPD performance through knowledge process. Knowledge acquisition, knowledge integration, knowledge application and knowledge sharing can represent knowledge process.

Two forms of customer involvement and new product development performance in the digital context: The moderating role of new product development stage

Effects of product lifecycle management systems on new product development performance

Comparing ANFIS and SEM in linear and nonlinear forecasting of new product development performance

It is widely acknowledged that new product and new service development are critical to the survival and performance of firms today. New Product Development (NPD) research emphasises the importance of employing models that aim to reduce new product risk and increase the likelihood of success. The bulk of this theory comes from traditional manufacturing enterprises, however, more recently researchers have begun to investigate whether these well established models and NPD practices are applicable to services (Johne and Storey 1998). While there has been a great deal of research into the manufacturing industry, little is known about product development processes within firms that are characterised by high pressure, dynamic markets and intense competition. This research investigates new product development processes within the software industry. This industry has, at face value, very different characteristics from traditional manufacturing firms. Through in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholders in the software industry, this research found that common, linear NPD models are not appropriate in the development of new software. The development of new products was identified as requiring a more iterative and, at the same time, organic or unstructured procedure than that commonly presented in NPD models.

In this chapter, the authors explore the technology management capability (TMC) in new product development (NPD) of Chinese manufacturing firms from the perspective of knowledge. Firstly, insights from TMC and NPD literature are utilized, through which NPD and TMC are connected by knowledge. The effects of TMC and its elements in different NPD stages are then theoretically analyzed by taking knowledge issues as a bridge. Secondly, data of TMC and NPD are collected from Chinese manufacturing firms and analyzed by regression technique to verify the theoretical findings. Thirdly, a typical Chinese manufacturing firm is selected for further verifying the findings and illustrating their application. The results show that TMC has a significantly positive relationship with NPD performance: searching capability and selecting capability exert greater impacts on NPD performance in the idea development stage; implementation capability and learning capability exert greater impacts in technical implementation stage; and searching capability and learning capability exert greater impacts in commercialization stage. These findings not only benefit managers in China and the West by deepening their understanding of the mechanism of TMC affecting NPD, but also provide managers with a practical and effective tool of analyzing problems in NPD—NPD problem analysis sheet.

PurposeThe objective of this research was to compare the behavior of two methods of managing an engineering change request (ECR) process, namely, perform changes as they occur or in a batch.Design/methodology/approachThis comparison was accomplished by creating a computer model of a new product development (NPD) process and simulating ECR management. The model connects process design and process characteristics (teamwork, parallel activities) to process outcomes (development time, effort). The first method executes the ECR promptly and the rework is done as soon as the ECR is initiated. In the second method, ECRs are batched; in other words, a number of them are accumulated, and processing of the ECRs takes place when a batch of a certain size has accumulated. Thus, the change requests are grouped into a batch, and then, the section(s) of the process to effect the change(s) is (are) reworked.FindingsBatching ECRs was found to be superior to doing them one at a time.Research limitations/implicationsFuture work should focus on refining the computer model and differentiating ECRs by assigning priorities to incoming ECRs.Practical implicationsFor product development managers, processing ECRs in batches is preferable than attending to them on an individual basis. Nevertheless, in some situations ECRs require immediate attention. A mechanism will always be needed to deal with situations directly. Also, in terms of batching, ECRs could be processed in groups on a periodic basis. Periodically performing ECRs due to new design versions or prototypes in a timely manner is a good compromise between a random batch mode and doing them individually.Originality/valueThe paper shows that batch processing is superior to executing ECRs promptly as they are received. This result has been shown through the use of a computer model of NPD. To the authors' knowledge, no other studies have used computer modeling to study this problem.

Lean concepts are routinely used in manufacturing but are still relatively new to New Product Development (NPD) process. If manufacturing can be modeled as flow of material, an analogous model for NPD process would be flow of information. This paper addresses the issue of eliminating wastes in new product development process by bringing lean concepts through an assessment system. The paper first defines wastes in the context of NPD process. A large number of waste drivers which add to wastes in any NPD process are identified. Similarly lean enablers and lean tools which if implemented can reduce wastes are also identified. A model connecting wastes and lean enables is arrived which gives a holistic picture of relationship to address and assess wastes in any NPD process. In order to measure the effectiveness of NPD process five lean performance measures are used which include design cost overrun, product cost overrun, schedule overrun, knowledge capture and customer satisfaction. Industrial inputs are used to arrive at assessment system proposed in this work and a further feedback from industry is used to enrich the assessment system after it is developed. Though the proposed system is developed for machine tool development process, it is generic in nature and can be used to assess any new product development activity.KeywordsNew product developmentLean product developmentLeanness assessment

Today’s hyper-competitive worldwide markets, turbulent environment, demanding customers, and diverse technological advancements force any companies developing new products to look into all the possible areas of improvement in the entire new product development (NPD) process. As a key determinant of firm’s competitiveness, efficient NPD is hard to imagine out of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategy. In fact, PLM provides a dynamic and integrated information management platform that enables firms to effectively manage the creation, modification, and exchange with product information on the collaborative NPD. Moreover, by adopting PLM systems, firms can derive numerous benefits such as increasing the speed to market of new products, improving the response to market demands, delivering more new products in a shorter time, reducing product development project costs, and reducing material and energy consumption costs. Hence, this paper presents an overview that mediates the effect of PLM system on NPD performance. Therefore, it is expected that the results will contribute to the literature and practice by increasing the understanding of how PLM system influences NPD performance.

More and more well-documented failure of established companies which could not respond to rapid market changes, such as Kodak and Nokia, demonstrate the importance of transferring marketing information into real firm performance. While marketing strategy and management literature has long advocated the direct impact of strong firm market orientation (MO) on new product development (NPD) performance, limited research has discussed the mediating mechanism of this MO-NPD performance relationship. Using the traditional source–position–performance (SPP) framework, this study focuses on the innovation ambidexterity perspective to investigate the mediating mechanism between MO and NPD performance. Then, this study proposed a conceptual framework and propositions to examine the MO - NPD performance relationship further. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are also discussed.

International new product development performance, entrepreneurial capability, and network in high-tech ventures