Reducing development times

The well-known marketing maxim, “The early bird catches the worm“, is today more apt than ever - including the area of product development. Quickly conquering worldwide markets with new technologies is for many companies a central criterion for success, in some cases even essential to survival.

But there are two sides to this coin: If new products and technologies are not yet fully developed when introduced on the market, there is a danger of recall measures, loss of image, and recourse claims.

Against this background, the central challenge is: How can the necessary product-development times – from the initial idea to the start of production (SOP) – be reduced without endangering the quality of the result (the fully developed products)?

The correct response to this important question is, from a business standpoint, not isolated action but rather a bundle of coordinated activities:

• In the sense of front loading, the key is to have available a modular product design in combination with a consistent toolkit structure. As a result, actual development work is less resource intensive and time intensive, meaning that it is considerably less expensive and lends itself much better to budgeting.
• The product-development process must be aligned to the various design types. This means that in place of single, uniformly valid, (excessively) comprehensive process, various design categories are defined that permit efficient and effective design work.
• During product development, various processes are implemented in parallel fashion, e.g. series-production development, procurement, and industrialization, meaning that work can be done simultaneously. 
• External development resources are applied in a targeted manner.
• A system providing information on key performance indictors must be implemented as a basis for effective planning and control. The motto is: As little as possible and as much as necessary!

ROI offers an extensive, practice-proven procedures and methods toolkit for meeting this challenge. You can learn more here:

• Systematic modular product designs
• Product standardization
• Make or buy
• Design of product development process
• Targeted use of methods and tools in product development

For more on ROI’s spectrum of services, see Innovation & Development.