Typical management shortfalls in new product development (NPD) and their avoidance (for mass and batch produced products)

This paper briefly reviews one model of the total NPD process, viewed as a “strategic business process”. The model is based upon that used by the UK Time to Market Association, and its member companies, and put forward as being, for many NPD situations, a “best practice” model. The most successful implementation of the model usually requires good “change management” within companies and also demands particular attention to the avoidance of some potential management shortfalls that are liable to occur. These have been noted to be prevalent for various ways of organizing NPD activity so that a consideration of them should be generally useful to all companies engaged in NPD. This paper reviews these typical management shortfalls. They have been observed from practical experience as well as from the case studies. These typical shortfalls relate to the performance of the senior people who oversee the NPD work, poor project review process, under-qualification of project team leaders, insufficient manufacturing inputs, and unrealistic planning. Whether or not these shortfalls are universally the “most frequent” and the “most important”, is arguable. What is clear from practical experience and some case studies, is that they are certainly very frequent and very important-because their effects can be devastating to the NPD effort. The authors discuss the “root causes”, and suggest ways to avoid and remedy them