It's no secret that companies that benchmark performance against actual practices in operations, quality, environmental, safety, risk management, energy, and many others are able to drive and sustain higher performance levels, and contribute meaningful value to enterprise objectives. Even companies that are long-time pros at benchmarking performance in these areas often struggle to pinpoint best practices that have a beneficial impact on new product introductions (NPI). When so much is at stake, what's holding them back?
The fact is, the pressure is on and growing for manufacturers:
- Ever-increasing product complexity
- Changing global markets
- Demanding regulatory bodies
- Shifting workforce needs
- Complex value chain
- Shrinking release cycles
Yes, late cycle compromises are usually (or even always) damaging, but the countless pressures industrial companies face today creates unprecedented risks. Performance analytics, social media and internet marketplaces only compound exposure.
NPI Power Play: Multi-Role Support, Cross-Functional Collaboration
While product development is responsible for many tasks in new product introductions (NPI), an effective NPI process should include multiple roles, and integrate voices and processes from procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, quality, and others.
Preliminary research by LNS indicates that the market falls short of a best practice approach, which erodes NPI success. For instance, only 7% of companies have automated design transfer between product development and manufacturing, while the majority use spreadsheets and documents. This deficiency means a lack of change-managed data in NPI, and higher scrap, rework, recalls, retooling, and delays. Consider this: in life sciences alone, 51% of manufacturers say quality management issues is the top challenge to speed products to market.
How does your company stack up?
LNS is conducting new research to examine NPI practices and performance, to assess adoption of a multi-role approach, current challenges, trends, and metrics. We're conducting the study across multiple roles and a variety of industries to articulate the state of best practices and the methodologies that lead to improved outcomes in today's market.
Specifically, the research examines:
- NPI objectives, success criteria and outcomes
- Identifying, managing, and associating requirements to downstream activities
- Adoption of best practices in risk process and data management
- Physical and virtual testing practices and data management
- Engaging and providing oversight to suppliers in NPI
- Capabilities in transferring development intent to manufacturing
- Performance across core metrics
- The role of data and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in NPI
Get Involved, Your Voice Counts
LNS just launched this brand new survey to examine NPI practices and performance. Executives, managers, and practitioners from manufacturing companies who participate and complete the survey will receive the full report in April. If your organization has relevant industrial or service-based operations, complete the survey now. If your organization is a software vendor, software reseller, integrator, publisher, or association, please do not complete the survey; instead contact LNS to learn more and request access: info@lnsresearch.com.
If your role is product development, product management, environmental, safety, risk management, operations, reliability, quality, product validation, procurement, supply chain, or supplier management, or senior management, we look forward to your participation and sharing the research results with you.