Product Development
Layla Nava Trejo
Embry Riddle Aeronautical University
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Product development is an essential to innovation of new products in any industry. It is a process that focuses on a series of principles, which outline the management and development of new products. Several things are thought to be correlated with product development. Some examples include Lean manufacturing, Just-in time manufacturing, work in process product flow, etc. (Carter, J., & Bradford, J., 2012; Reinertsen, D. , 2009) In the present paper the underlying principles of product development are investigated. It is hypothesized that in order to provide real results, quickly, an efficient product development process must be in place. Poor product development processes lead to inefficient and poor products. The following five literature reviews attempt to demonstrate and support the hypothesis.
In the book written by Reinertsen (2009), Eight major areas of product development were examined to determine why poor product development practices leads to poor product performance. The focus was placed on today’s product development practices. Speed, quality and efficiency of practices were also evaluated to determine the very core of the development process. It was hypothesized that the managing of current product development is wrong. The examples used to identify poor processes included traditional product development dictum of working in large batches, its examined that batch sizes should be as small as possible in order to also help with the economics surrounding the development of the product. The use of economic theory was applied to every step of the processes. Scheduling, efficiency, quality standards, etc.
In order to establish the impact in economic terms regarding the development of a project the economic understanding of the process was evaluated. Understanding the relationships between profit and revenue and how they impact each other is critical in development efforts. The result of such research is a well organized set of principles which outlines practical methods to improve economic decisions, manage queues, reduce batch size, apply work in process constraints,
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accelerate feedback, manage flows in the presence of variability, and decentralize control
(Reinertsen, 2009). The results also indicated that there are researched and established practices which can be modified to practically approach the development process. Drawing on ideas like lean manufacturing but also more unconventional ideas like telecommunications networks, transportation systems and computer operating systems. The models are presented in economic terms as well as development terms, supporting the original idea that poor product development processes lead to poor product performance. The model based on economics emphasizes the cost of delay, and the cost of delivery related to high utilization. All of these results confirm the hypothesis that an efficient product development process must be established in order to avoid poor product performance. One limitation of the research and its presentation is that the underlying current is focused on the economics of improvements, while the concepts are valid the language and math presented are often difficult to follow.
Next the topic of effective placement of product development processes in relation to innovation of products is addressed according to the structure of the product. In a research article by Ahmadi and Wang (n.d.) the operational frameworks necessary for structuring product development processes were detailed. The focus was placed on the development of a framework of procedures which specifically affect product development time and cost. The framework was used as an integral part of the re-engineering project for product development of rocket engines at Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International. Following the structured
