Management and organisational factors in New Product Development (NPD) success

The desire to improve the performance of their new product development acti vities and process is firmly established within companies. This paper descr ibes an attempt to produce an evaluation taxonomy and framework to enable c omparisons to assess their NPD performance and the factors leading to succe ss. This framework is based on a product's complexities (structural and fun ctional) and related factors and commercial constraints. In particular, it looks at the management and organisational factors involved in NPD and how these may be enhanced to increase NPD success rates. These factors were inv estigated during a three-year Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Co uncil (EPSRC) funded research programme. The outcome of this research progr amme is the Assessment Tool and Methodology (ATM) which evaluates a company 's NPD activities and process performance. The Various ways in which the AT M may be used are explained. Significant findings relating to success in product development are shown f rom the initial results comparing successful product developments from a va riety of companies. Also described are the results of a survey of company b ased NPD performance improvement approaches and the related NPD performance measurement systems and metrics being used. The results from the use of th e ATM with Japanese companies within Japan are also included as a compariso n.