Socio-Technical Features and Performance Impact Factors in New Product Development Processes

摘要

New product development process (NPDP) possesses typical "socio-technical" features, involving not only technical related aspects but also organizational related perspectives. Research and practice revealed that real challenge in new product development comes from organizational related issues, rather than technical related aspects. While, there is little literature found to study new product development processes within an interdisciplinary framework covering both considerations. This paper introduced different new product development process models and performance measurements, discussed their socio-technical features. This paper presented a case study new product development project that is aiming to develop non-destructive testing (NDT) robot employedfor detecting flaws in ship hull. This research developed a "socio-technical diagram " (STD) for new product development process, with focus on developing non-destructive testing (NDT) products, considering both technical aspects and organizationalperspectives. This paper reported the process of application new product development "socio-technical diagram " into the development of non-destructive testing robot in the case study project. At the end of the development process, a non-destructive testing robot was successfully developed. This paper presented a new method for researchers to explore new product development processes and their socio-technical features, and demonstrated an operational instruction for technical managers to guide industrial non-destructive testing products development.