New product development as a complex system of decisions

Abstract

Whilst manufacturing excellence helps to maintain the current survival of companies the development of new products is a critical process for ensuring future survival. The efficiency and effectiveness of the new product development (NPD) process depends on the integrated decision making ability of the system, but current NPD frameworks focus on managing the co-ordination activities and transfer of information. These existing frameworks achieve cost and lead-time reductions, but at the expense of innovation. Thus, this paper introduces a framework that seeks to address this trade-off issue by using a complex systems approach to explore and better understand the characteristics of emergence and self-organisation and their impact on NPD cost, lead-time, reliability and innovation.