Excellency in Industrial Product Development

Abstract

Due to rising international competition, product development is put under increasing pressure. Besides a short time-to-market, market success of a new product depends on low costs, path-breaking innovations as well as high quality standards. In order to achieve these goals, a multitude of solution alternatives can be applied. However, only a few methods such as “Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)” are mastered and consequently used in engineering practice. Furthermore, at times of low available capacities, methods are only applied if immediate payback on development progress can be expected. In order to attain excellency in product development, pursued development principles and their priorities must become transparent to management and employees. Each principle, e.g. “pull principle”, “flexibility” or “continuous information flows”, is influenced by several success factors, such as “processes”, “methods use” or “IT tools”. Principles are related to success factors by concrete solution elements. In ideal case, offered solution elements are proven best practices of a company. Applicable solution elements range from “Simultaneous Engineering”, “reference processes”, “systematic selection of solution ideas”, “Digital Mock Up” to “Integrated CAD/CAPP System”. As structuring means for industrial practice, a matrix-based product development system (PDS) containing solution elements is proposed and illustrated by an application example. PDS provides an overview and application specific supply of best practices to practitioners. For organizational embedding of PDS, roles and responsibilities of promoters, process owners and experts are described.