Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

When entering the global market, companies encounter several difficulties, the most severe being long product development times and too high costs of sequential product and process development. In order to overcome this problem, the companies will have to make a shift from sequential product development (which is wasteful regarding time and costs) to a project-driven concurrent product development as soon as possible.

The article presents a procedure for project-driven concurrent product development by taking into account three strategic management methods: parallelness, standardization, and integration of product development processes. Also presented are the changes in organizational concept of the company, organization of processes, organization of work and organization of IT, which are required for a transition from sequential to concurrent product development.

Finally, an analysis is presented on concurrent product development teams in a company; this analysis is a prerequisite for a transition to a new method of product development.

Keywords

product development time parallelness of processes standardization of processes integration of processes teamwork.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Prasad, B. ( 1996). Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals, Integrated Product and Process Organization, Vol. I, pp. 216-276, New Jersey: Prentice Hall PTR.

Duhovnik, J. , Starbek, M. , Dwivedi, S.N. and Prasad, B. (2001). Development of New Products in Small Companies, Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications , 9(3): 191-210.

Eversheim, W. , Bochtler, W. and Laufenberg, L. ( 1995). Simultaneous Engineering, Berlin Heidelberg : Springer-Verlag.

Kušar, J. , Bradeško , L. , Duhovnik, J. and Starbek, M. (2008). Project Management of Product Development, Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 54(9): 588-606.

Bullinger, H.J. and Warnecke, H.J. ( 1996). Neue Organisationsformen in Unternehmen, Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

Lencioni, P. ( 2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Porter, H.E. ( 1996). Relationship Awareness Theory, Carlsbad, CA, USA: Personal Strengths Publishing.

Belbin, R.M. ( 2003). Team Roles at Work, Elsevier, Amsterdam.

INTERPLACE. 2008. User’s Manual, Belbin Associates.

Project-driven Concurrent Product Development

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References