In situations that are experienced as “fuzzy”, it is recommended to first determine whether this is caused by unwanted ambiguity, i.e. multiple and conflicting interpretations, pertaining either to the product, the market, the NPD process or the organisation’s resources. If so, they should explicate these interpretations and their underlying assumptions as hypotheses and test them individually. Identifying and testing underlying assumptions at an early stage of the NPD project will provide the most efficient reduction of ambiguity.
Four case studies of new product development.
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Organizations should have coherent administrative procedures, including information-gathering systems reviewing new opportunities; flexible capital budgets that extend beyond two years; up-to-date capital budgeting manuals; full time capital budgeting staff; regular reviews of hurdle rates; and a capital appropriation committee to vet projects.
Survey with significant findings.
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Plan for integration of internal organizational activities, which can increase communication, coordination and enhances competitive capabilities.
Survey of 244 manufacturing firms across several industries.
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Product performance is driven by the amount, variety and problem-solving organization of information and by the resources available to the project team.
Literature review. Summary statement drawn from body of literature reviewed by the authors.
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Sound evaluation methods are needed for new product success, including strategic screenings of new product proposals; utilization of market research; and primary and secondary valuation using a variety of methods such as net present value or Payback.
Survey with significant findings.
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The issues which characterize the NPD stages from the project management perspective (PPM group) are to determine the following: milestone count; how many projects pass from one stage to the next; project count by stage (WIP); resource requirements and time lines.
The data has been collected by the researcher from within the company from a wide variety of sources ranging from NPD documentation, archival records and interviews with various people working on the R&D process.
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Be flexible with managing resources to have higher levels of success with product development execution.
Survey of 120 development projects from 57 firms. Hierarchical regression was significant, beta = .179 at p<=.1.
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Effectively reviewing information from past new product development projects while integrating marketing and research and development will significantly influence product launch proficiency, design change frequency and technological core competency fit.
Survey. Significant interaction for product launch proficiency (F=4.49, p<.05), design change frequency (F=4.32, p<.05) and technological core competency fit (F=5.22, p<.05).
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Higher levels of sophistication in capital budgeting are associated with new product development success.
Survey with significant findings.
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Maintain a feasible amount of development projects at one time, in order to finish projects faster.
Case Study. Similar discovery found by top manufacturers which applied process management to their development projects.
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Resource deficiency is a major problem for many organizations, despite the fact that the provision of sufficient resources is one of the stronger factors distinguishing best from worst performers. In particular, marketing and sales often find that they lack needed resources, while technical resources are deemed barely adequate.
Survey of 105 U.S. companies.
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Too much multi-tasking occurs among members of new product development teams- too many projects, too much other work, a lack of focus, and a lack of a dedicated effort to their new product development projects. The results are quite negative — the ability to focus and dedicate resources is one of the important drivers of new product development performance. Resource allocation and focus must be a top priority if the goals of reduced time to market and quality of execution are to be realized.
Survey of 105 U.S. companies.
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Financial evaluation dilemma- Flimsy data may result in the elimination of potentially successful projects. However, failure to evaluate at an early stage (using any and all available data) results in new product development failure.
Source: Hayes & Abernathy, 1980; Hayes & Garvin, 1982; Pearson, 1986. In: Neale, C.W. (1994)

An interesting modification to concurrent engineering is the agile concurrent engineering (ACE) methodology. Its main characteristics are full utilization of resources through resource sharing, agile teams suited for medium or small-sized firms and minimum organization restructuring. In this methodology, a quantitative modeling tool for the concurrent engineering process was developed which describes the mini-circulations and resource sharing within the system. This tool (ESHLEP-N) was a high-level evaluation, stochastic Petri-net model.
Source: Yan and Jiang (1999). In: Kamrani, A., & Vijayan, A. (2006)

Coordination in this sense refers to the problem of ensuring that scarce development resources are allocated efficiently to the different tasks that must be accomplished, that task deadlines are set appropriately and communicated clearly, and that the sequence of planned activities leads to a total project duration that approaches the minimum possible. In the literature on project management, these problems are typically addressed in terms of PERT charts and 'critical path analysis.'
Source: Eppen, Gould, and Schmidt (1993). In: Hoopes, D.G., & Postrel, S. (1999)

The pan-European systematic concurrent design of products, equipments and control systems (SCOPES) project was completed in July 1995. Its aim was to develop a system framework which was able to store and provide knowledge of a company’s products, processes, equipment and shop floor control strategies to the product development team. The most crucial part of this project was the integration of engineering and production knowledge.
Source: Wallace (1995). In: Kamrani, A., & Vijayan, A. (2006)

Organizational strength (strategy, skills, culture) as driver of new product success.
Source: Heynard and Szymanski, 2001; Montoya- Weiss ad Caklantone, 1994). In: Troy, L. Hirunyawipada, T. & Paswan, A. (2008)