New Product Introduction Process Integration

摘要

The new product introduction process as it exists today is usually a series of autonomous steps that may cross several organizations within a company or several different companies. Because of the autonomy and the intricacies of each step, the process is very inefficient, redundant, manual, and error prone. If the NPI process at most companies is measured from the conceptual design analysis through to the final product reaching the marketplace, many weeks would be required to get a new product to market. A tremendous opportunity exists to streamline this process and make it more efficient, while at the same time creating a more robust product that can easily be moved within the global marketplace. Establishing a defined and structured NPI process flow provides a common source of information for the design during its introduction to the marketplace as well as throughout the design's life cycle. Integration of the engineering tools to this structure offers tangible benefits in the quality of the design being released and accurate modeling of the design as it is being developed. This in turn decreases the number of revisions required on any given design and increases the design's manufacturability. The composite design requirements and the composite design history obtained through such a structure provides the necessary tools to easily move the product in the global marketplace. This approach puts the design owner in control of any changes that may transpire through the design phase or movement of the product within the marketplace. With the design owner controlling the changes, the original design intent can be maintained. Tools are available within the industry that facilitate the integration of the new product introduction process. It is a matter of developing an NPI process flow and structuring it so that predesign analysis tools, layup modeling tools, process modeling tools, and DFM relational analysis tools can be integrated logically to the process. Value should be added to the product through each process step and the pertinent data retained for use in the process wherever it is needed.