Metrics for Measuring Product Development Cycle Time

As global competitive pressure increases and product life cycles compress, many companies are trying to shorten their product development cycles. Firms are implementing a wide variety of different techniques, management processes and development strategies in their quest for shorter development cycles. We read anecdotal accounts of some efforts that herald great success stories but seldom hear about any failures. Unfortunately, some of the companies changing their development processes do so without any a priori basis for determining whether the process change will have helped or hindered them. The firm implements the new process without having a cycle time performance baseline against which to compare results from the new process. In this article, Abbie Griffin presents a method for obtaining product development cycle time performance baselines. She also demonstrates how to use them to either forecast expected project duration, given that you have not changed your development process, or determine whether a process change has actually decreased development cycle times.     

Product Innovativeness and Entry Strategy: Impact on Cycle Time and Break-even Time

New product development time, or cycle time, has become a critical competitive variable, particularly for small high-tech manufacturing firms. The business press is filled with examples about large firms that have successfully reduced cycle time. This article investigates the relative impact of product innovation and entry strategy on cycle time and initial market performance of small firms. Using a sample of seventy-three small manufacturing firms, Abdul Ali, Robert Krapfel, Jr., and Douglas LaBahn find that faster product development is associated with shorter break-even time. Their results also indicate that these firms are achieving shorter cycle time not by sacrificing product quality, but by keeping the technical content of the product simple. Past research has not taken into account this relationship, and this may be one of the reasons why researchers have often suggested conflicting impact of entry strategy on market performance.     

Differential Effects of the Primary Forms of Cross Functional Integration on Product Development Cycle Time

In markets characterized by high rates of technological and market change product life cycles tend to be shorter, resulting in the increased importance of competing on the basis of product development cycle time. For firms operating in these dynamic market environments, competing on the basis of cycle time may not only be a source of competitive advantage, but in some industries may actually be essential for survival.
In this investigation the relative importance of five forms of cross functional integration and R&D integration of information or knowledge from past projects were explored in terms of their effects on product development cycle time. The five forms of cross functional integration included R&D/marketing integration, R&D/customer integration, R&D/manufacturing integration, R&D/supplier integration, and strategic partnerships. A sample of 65 U.S. and Scandinavian high technology firms (or strategic business units) were studied. The sample included firms from the computer, telecommunications, instruments, specialty chemicals, biotechnology, and software industries.
The results demonstrated that R&D integration of knowledge from past projects explained the largest degree of variation in product development cycle time. R&D/marketing integration and R&D/customer integration explained the next largest degree of variation in cycle time reduction. Cross cultural generalizability tests demonstrated that the results were generalizable across the U.S. and Scandinavian samples of firms. In addition, the results were found to be generalizable across industry or product category for five of the six forms of integration.     

Increasing Learning and Time Efficiency in Interorganizational New Product Development Teams*

Despite the growing popularity of new product development across organizational boundaries, the processes, mechanisms, or dynamics that leverage performance in interorganizational (I‐O) product development teams are not well understood. Such teams are staffed with individuals drawn from the partnering firms and are relied on to develop successful new products while at the same time enhancing mutual learning and reducing development time. However, these collaborations can encounter difficulties when partners from different corporate cultures and thought worlds must coordinate and depend on one another and often lead to disappointing performance. To facilitate collaboration, the creation of a safe, supportive, challenging, and engaging environment is particularly important for enabling productive collaborative I‐O teamwork and is essential for learning and time efficient product development. This research develops and tests a model of proposed factors to increase both learning and time efficiency on I‐O new product teams. It is argued that specific behaviors (caring), beliefs (psychological safety), task‐related processes (shared problem solving), and governance mechanisms (clear management direction) create a positive climate that increases learning and time efficiency on I‐O teams. Results of an empirical study of 50 collaborative new product development projects indicate that (1) shared problem solving and caring behavior support both learning and time efficiency on I‐O teams, (2) team psychological safety is positively related to learning, (3) management direction is positively associated with time efficiency, and (4) shared problem solving is more strongly related to both performance dimensions than are the other factors. The factors supporting time efficiency are slightly different from those that foster learning. The relative importance of these factors also differs considerably for both performance aspects. Overall, this study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that facilitate a favorable environment for productive collaboration on I‐O teams, which go beyond contracts or top‐management supervision. Establishing such an environment can help to balance management concerns and promote the success of I‐O teams. The significance of the results is elevated by the fragility of collaborative ventures and their potential for failure, when firms with different organizational cultures, thought worlds, objectives, and intentions increasingly decide to work across organizational boundaries for the development of new products.     

The Effects of Cognitive Problem-Solving Orientation and Technological Familiarity on Faster New Product Development

This study examines the relationships between speed of development and the cognitive problemsolving orientations of both members of the team and the project leader when they work with more familiar or less familiar technologies. Edward McDonough and Gloria Barczak collected data from 32 new product development projects in 12 British companies. They report that technological familiarity moderates the relationship between speed of development and the cognitive problem-solving orientation of both project leaders and project teams and they explore implications of these results for R&D managers.     

Balancing Development Costs and Sales to Optimize the Development Time of Product Line Additions*

Development teams often use mental models to simplify development time decision making because a comprehensive empirical assessment of the trade‐offs across the metrics of development time, development costs, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product sales is simply not feasible. Surprisingly, these mental models have not been studied in prior research on the trade‐offs among the aforementioned metrics. These mental models are important to consider, however, because they define reality, specify what team members attend to, and guide their decision making. As such, these models influence how development teams make trade‐offs across the four metrics to try to optimize new product profitability. Teams with such an objective should manage to a development time that minimizes development costs and to a proficient market‐entry timing that maximizes new product sales. Yet many teams use mental models for development time decision making that focus either just on development costs or on proficiency in market‐entry timing. This survey‐based study uses data from 115 completed NPD projects, all product line additions from manufacturers in The Netherlands, to demonstrate that there is a cost to simplifying decision making. Making development time decisions without taking into account the contingency between development time and proficiency in market‐entry timing can be misleading, and using either a sales‐maximization or a cost‐minimization simplified decision‐making model may result in a cost penalty or a sales loss. The results from this study show that the development time that maximizes new product profitability is longer than the time that maximizes new product sales and is shorter than the development time that minimizes development costs. Furthermore, the results reveal that the cost penalty of sales maximization is smaller than the sales loss of development costs minimization. An important implication of the results is that, to determine the optimal development time, teams need to distinguish between cost and sales effects of development time reductions. To determine the relative impact of these effects this study also estimates the elasticities of development costs, new product sales, and new product profitability with regard to development time. Armed with this knowledge, development teams should be better equipped to make trade‐offs among the four metrics of development time, development costs, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product sales.     

Technology Exploitation Paths: Combining Technological and Complementary Resources in New Product Development and Licensing

Technological resources in the form of patents, trade secrets, and know‐how have become key assets for modern enterprises. This paper addresses a critical issue in technology and innovation management, namely, the commercial exploitation of technological resources resulting from research and development (R&D) investments. Extracting economic value from these resources by maximizing the benefits for shareholders is an extremely challenging task because technological resources are intangible, idiosyncratic, uncertain, predominantly tacit, and with poorly defined property rights. In their attempt to extract the maximum value from their technological resources, firms increasingly combine their internal exploitation through new product development (NPD) with external exploitation through licensing. However, most existing studies on NPD and technology licensing have treated the two exploitation paths independently and in isolation, which has resulted in two separate research streams using different theories and addressing different managerial challenges. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by developing and testing a comprehensive conceptual framework that simultaneously considers the antecedents affecting the successful implementation of NPD and licensing strategies as well as their consequences on firm profitability. The paper in particular investigates the effects of the interplay between technological resources and three types of complementary resources, marketing, manufacturing, and relational. We test the model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 733 Spanish manufacturing firms observed from 2003 to 2007. The data provide support for the existence of different paths to market firm technologies: an internal path, whereby the ownership of technological resources fully explains NPD performance, and an external path, whereby high intensity of marketing and relational resources reinforces the positive effect of technological resources on licensing performance. This sustains the relevance of the resource‐based value‐enhancing effects of complementary resources in licensing, as opposed to the motivation‐reducing effects advanced by transaction cost‐based literature. Moreover, the empirical analysis shows a substitution effect between NPD and licensing, whereby their simultaneous pursuit at intense levels is associated with lower profit margins. This provides evidence of the much theorized, but seldom tested, rent dissipation effect. These findings offer several contributions to research on licensing, NPD, open innovation, and the resource‐based view of the firm. On a managerial level, they suggest that achieving maximum value from proprietary technologies may not entail exploiting them both through external and internal paths. Managers are also informed that the resource combinations that enhance licensing performance include marketing and relational resources.     

Product Development Time Performance: Investigating the Effect of Interactions between Drivers

Rapid and punctual new product development (NPD) has become a top priority in many organizations as competitors rush to commercialize emerging technologies and to satisfy customer needs. Despite the importance of this issue, conceptual models or systematic testing of specific drivers that could improve time performances in NPD are few and far between. There is, however, a lack of extensive empirical research into whether “interactions” between different drivers affect time performances. This article aims to investigate whether drivers can interact and can influence time performances with a “synergistic” effect. A survey was carried out in order to study the effects of two‐way driver interactions on “launch on time” and “launch against an accelerated schedule.” Three groups of drivers within the development‐process, organizational‐mechanisms, and strategic‐capabilities were considered. As this is an exploratory study, two‐way interactions between drivers of different groups were analyzed in order to detect which drivers had a synergistic effect on time performances. The study was based on a sample of 85 manufacturing firms producing mainly industrial goods. The NPD program within each company was considered, i.e., the new products developed and launched in the last three years. The statistical approach used is suitable for exploratory surveys. In the first phase, the G‐correlation test was used to verify the effects of single drivers in order to help interpret the results regarding two‐way driver interactions. In the second phase, regression models with two‐way driver interaction were performed with both linear and logistic regression in order to discover which significant models had a significant driver interaction. The resulting 13 models showed that interactions played an important role in determining time performances. The following are some of the most interesting results, as they have managerial implications. The NP Strategic Guide (clear definition and communication of new product goals) interacts with and enhances the influence of other drivers, such as predevelopment tasks, project manager use, and supplier and customer involvement. Technological and up‐front staff capabilities create important interactions with product definition and with customer involvement, which avoids development delays. Furthermore, the authors of this study discovered that the adoption of an overlapping approach without a high level of interfunctional team use may not be time efficient. Thus, if a firm has to work to a tight development schedule, it should seek and should integrate any possible synergistic effects between team use and overlapping development phases. The insights into interactions provide useful information that can be used when setting priorities and can help to attain higher performances by adopting a combination of selected drivers. In particular, the best practices, which many studies have highlighted, do influence time performances that depend mainly on the so‐called strategic‐capabilities drivers. These latter variables, unlike practices and activities, require a complex learning process. The path toward improvements within the development‐process requires both long periods of time and an integrated view of the process; hence, improvements cannot be achieved by simply applying common practices. Therefore, analysis of interactions within the NPD field looks promising and requires further study.     

The Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on New Product Development and Time Efficiency*

This empirical study examines the influence of environmental uncertainty on industrial product innovation. The present study addresses what is believed to be a shortcoming in the new product development literature and explores potential effects of environmental uncertainty on the development process, project organization, and on project timeliness with a sample of development projects in two countries, Canada and Australia. When looking at the combined sample of 182 completed projects, this study finds that the perceived market‐related project environment has a direct and positive impact on time efficiency. Further, this research finds that a higher degree of technological uncertainty moderates the relationship between development process, project organization and time efficiency. Consequently, innovating companies may benefit by adapting some of their development approaches to different environmental conditions and to varying degrees of uncertainty. However, when examining country‐specific effects, the results change quite significantly. In particular, the findings indicate that environmental uncertainty in the Canadian sample neither directly impacts time efficiency, nor does it have any moderating effect. Instead, technical proficiency in the development process, project team organization, and process compression appear to be viable strategies to increase time‐efficient development. In contrast, the results of the Australian study suggest that perceived market and technological uncertainty impact time efficiency. In particular, under conditions of technological unpredictability, project team organization increases time efficiency, whereas process compression appears to decrease time‐efficient product development. However, process compression seems to be a viable strategy in environments characterized by lower technological uncertainty. The results also point to the importance of disaggregating data when studying product development processes across countries.     

Cycle Time in Packaged Software Firms

Reduction of cycle time (i.e., time to market) is a fundamental competitive strategy in many industries. With the current proliferation of personal computer (PC) technology, software developers face intense competition. However, unlike their counterparts in other consumer goods markets, product development managers in the software industry appear to be less concerned with (or even aware of) cycle time than they are with other competitive variables. To explore the role of cycle-time reduction in the process of developing software packages, Erran Carmel conducted a study of 15 software package companies in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. The survey results indicate that software package developers are generally unaware of cycle-time reduction as a management concept. Instead, software developers tend to focus on rapid development, with an emphasis on “crunch” periods of intense effort aimed at meeting a deadline. During these periods of peak activity, 87% of the developers in core teams worked more than 56 hours per week and 47% worked more than 71 hours per week. In terms of the organizational variables necessary for cycle-time reduction, all of the survey respondents point to the importance of a small, cohesive, core development team, similar to a cross-functional team. Members of the core team are entrepreneurial and share a common vision of the product's design, use, and long-term direction. As for the development variables associated with cycle-time reduction, the software companies in the survey typically do not use process models or risk analysis techniques. Similarly, they devote scant resources to automated tools. For the majority of the firms in the survey, annual investment in automated software development tools is less than $1,000 per developer. On the other hand, reuse (as embodied in object-oriented design and development) and incremental innovation are important to all of the sample firms. Although quality assurance (QA) activities are not addressed in the innovation literature, QA is a significant cycle-time component in software development. As demonstrated by the industry practice of releasing products with long lists of known defects, the software product category clearly has quality problems. With the current boom in new users, pressure will grow for improved quality. To remain competitive, software developers need to determine how they can better integrate QA activities into the development process while reducing cycle time.     

Exploring Mediating and Moderating Influences on the Links among Cycle Time,Proficiency in Entry Timing,and New Product Profitability*

Development cycle time is the elapsed time from the beginning of idea generation to the moment that the new product is ready for market introduction. Market‐entry timing is contingent upon the new product's cycle time. Only when the product is completed can a firm decide whether and when to enter the market to exploit the new product's window of opportunity. To determine the right moment of entry a firm needs to correctly balance the risks of premature entry and the missed opportunity of late entry. Proficient market‐entry timing is therefore defined as the firm's ability to get the market‐entry timing right (i.e., neither too early nor too late). The literature has produced divergent evidence with regard to the effects of development cycle time and proficiency in market‐entry timing on new product profitability. To explain these disparities this study (1) explores the mediating roles of development costs and sales volume in the relationships among development cycle time, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product profitability, respectively; and it (2) explores the moderating influence of product newness on the relationship between development cycle time and development costs and that of new product advantage on the link between proficiency in market‐entry timing and sales volume. The results from a survey‐based study of 72 manufacturers of industrial products in the Netherlands suggest that development costs mediate the relationship between development cycle time and new product profitability and that sales volume mediates the link between proficiency in market‐entry timing and new product profitability. In addition, the findings indicate that new product advantage strengthens the positive relationship between proficiency in market‐entry timing and sales volume. The results provide no evidence for a moderating effect of product newness. These results have important implications because to maximize new product profitability managers need to distinguish between costs and demand side effects of development cycle time and market‐entry timing on new product profitability. Keeping this distinction in mind should help them to better determine the relative profit impact of investments in cycle time reduction or improved entry timing. Moreover, the findings suggest that highly advantaged products that enter the market at the right time may have a highly attenuated sales volume. It also implies that new products with lower advantage may have very little leeway in hitting the “sweet spot” in market. The message is that “doing the right thing” (i.e., to develop a highly advantaged new product) may be at least as important as correctly balancing the risks of premature entry and the missed opportunity of late entry.     

Product Development

This study investigates the prevalence of product-development courses at accredited educational institutions. The authors assess pedagogical approaches and instructional materials used in these courses. The analysis is based on a survey of 320 accredited business schools, supplemented by an archival review of other business schools' catalogs. The results suggest considerable growth in the number of product development/management courses compared to a decade ago. Four textbooks dominate the market, but other contenders for adoption are available. Cases are commonly used to facilitate understanding of presented issues. Geographic differences show that schools located in the Northeast, Midwest, and West are more likely to address product-related issues in their business curricula.     

Industrial New Product Launch Strategies and Product Development Performance

Just as reporters must answer a few fundamental questions in every story they write, decision-makers in the new product development (NPD) process must address five key issues: what to launch, where to launch, when to launch, why to launch, and how to launch. These decisions involve significant commitments of time, money, and resources. They also go a long way toward determining the success or failure of any new product. Deeper insight into the tradeoffs these decisions involve may help to increase the likelihood of success for product launch efforts. Erik Jan Hultink, Abbie Griffin, Susan Hart, and Henry Robben present the results of a study that examines the interplay between these product launch decisions and NPD performance. Noting that previous launch studies focus primarily on the tactical decisions (that is, how to launch) rather than on the strategic decisions (what, where, when, and why to launch), they explore not only which decisions are important to success, but also the associations between the two sets of decisions. Because the strategic launch decisions made early in the NPD process affect the tactical decisions made later in the process, their study emphasizes the importance of launch consistency—that is, the alignment of the strategic and tactical decisions made throughout the process. The survey respondents—managers from marketing, product development, or general management in U.K. firms—provided information about 221 industrial new products launched during the previous five years. The responses identify associations between various sets of strategic and tactical decisions. That is, the responses suggest that the strategic decisions managers make regarding product innovativeness, market targeting, the number of competitors, and whether the product is marketing- or technology-driven are associated with subsequent tactical decisions regarding branding, distribution expenditure and intensity, and pricing. The study also suggests that different sets of launch decisions have differing effects on performance of industrial new products. In this study, the greatest success was enjoyed by a small group of respondents categorized as Niche Innovators. Their launch strategy involves a niche focus, targeting innovative products into markets with few competitors. Tactical decisions made by this group include exclusive distribution, a skimming pricing strategy, and a broad product assortment.     

New Product Development Structures: The Effect of Customer Overload on Post-Concept Time to Market

In corporate policy statements, seminars, journal articles—even in television commercials—the message comes through loud and clear: To remain competitive, we must do a better job of listening to our customers. Through close contact with customers, designers can more accurately identify market requirements, quickly refine product specifications, and thus reduce time to market. However, too much customer input can create confusion and duplication of effort, which ultimately increases time to market. In other words, some firms run the risk of over-listening to their customers. In a study of three global players in the electronic component industry, Srikant Datar, Clark Jordan, Sunder Kekre, Surendra Rajiv, and Kannan Srinivasan explore the effects of having too much input from customers. Specifically, they examine the relationship between a company's new product development structure and the volume of customer input, which in turn can affect time to market. The high-tech, fast-cycle firms examined in this study employ two distinct new product development structures: concentrated and distributed. A concentrated structure locates all product designers in one facility. This facilitates cross-product learning among designers, but limits designers' contact with customers and process engineers. A distributed structure disperses new product development among numerous manufacturing sites, giving designers close contact with customers and process engineers. However, a distributed structure limits designers' opportunities for cross-product learning. Analysis of 220 new product efforts reveals that the distributed structure offered a time-to-market advantage as long as these firms efficiently managed the level of customer interaction. When designers received input on the product design from no more than 25 customers, the distributed structure provided shorter time to market than the concentrated structure. Beyond the 25-customer level, time-to-market performance of the distributed structure degraded quickly and at an increasing rate. In such cases, more effective management of customer interaction might allow firms employing a distributed structure to enjoy the benefits not only of customer input, but also of improved coordination between product designers and process engineers.     

阀门的选用与技术发展

针对阀门的选用标准和实际使用要求,对选用过程中的重点内容进行了分析介绍.提出阀门选用过程中的压力等级、使用温度、连接形式、阀盖密封及密封性要求等重点注意事项.通过典型阀门实际发生的事故原因分析,要求对阀门的结构、材质、使用条件要综合考虑,突出阀门选型对安全使用的重要性.介绍了几种目前比较先进的阀门新技术,对新型阀门实际使用场合,选用的优缺点进行了比较分析.     

产品生命周期评价在钢铁行业的应用和前景

通过对绿色产品的介绍引出产品生命周期评价的基本原理和内涵，详尽地阐述和分析了目前产品生命周期在钢铁行业的应用情况，指出了生命周期评价在钢铁行业的发展前景。     

基于技术间断的不可逆产品替代陷阱研究

本文从“企业越创新越死亡”的悖论出发,引出了不可逆产品替代陷阱的概念,通过从技术间断的角度对不可逆产品替代的过程进行描述和分析,总结出了企业陷入不可逆产品替代陷阱的原因。进而分析了不可逆替代陷阱的常见表现及其特征,提出了企业避免陷入不可逆产品替代陷阱的一些对策思路。     

Extent and Impact of Incubation Time in New Product Diffusion

This article examines the time between product development and market launch, and its relation to the subsequent diffusion of consumer durables. We find that this "incubation time" is long. Further, it is a useful predictor of the shape of the subsequent sales diffusion curve. Using the Bass model as a base, we find that the longer the incubation time, the lower the coefficient of innovation ( p ) and the longer the time to peak sales. Further, using the incubation time in a Bayesian forecasting model significantly improves forecasts early in the life cycle. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.