Reducing ambiguity and uncertainty during new product development: a system dynamics based approach

This paper presents an approach useful to analyse the performance of the product development model adopted by a company. It was implemented to analyse a specific sub-system - "the climatic system" - of a new car model developed by a large Italian car manufacturer. The activity chain was modelled by using the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) tool, while the nature of the information and knowledge flows coordinating tasks were the primary focus of our study. DSM offers several advantages for process mapping compared to other tools available in the literature and widely used in the new product development environment (i.e. PERT, IDEF suites, etc.). System dynamics was implemented to analyse the dynamic behavior of the product development process relatively to the subsystem considered. In particular, the effect of both ambiguity and uncertainty of the information and knowledge flows on the process performance was taken into account. The analysis was supported by the continuous feedback from the technical managers and engineers involved in the subsystem development. A questionnaire was developed and administered to technical managers and engineers to collect data. Most of the data were collected using measuring scales designed for the purpose.