Eduard Kepl

2024

New product development (NPD) is crucial for innovative companies to succeed and remain competitive. NPD tends to be highly challenging, especially in markets characterized by customer individuality, short product life cycles, and tight competition. New products must get to the market fast, meeting multiple customer segments at a competitive price. In this paper, we will discuss the current knowledge of the literature on NPD and unveil some essential aspects that influence the success of such projects. The focus lies on the departments involved, trade-offs between critical elements of NPD projects, and the impact of modular product design on NPD. Each NPD department has its own objectives and interests in new products, often leading to conflicts and issues in projects. The NPD project manager must balance and coordinate the departments and ensure a project meets its targets. Common success indicators for NPD are time-to-market, development/product costs, and new product performance/functionality. These elements can indicate whether a project should continue or not. Also, these dimensions are connected. Therefore, project managers must make careful trade-offs between performance indicators when making decisions in NPD. Furthermore, modular product design can pose advantages to NPD by accelerating development, decreasing overall development costs and investments, and increasing a product’s market performance. However, modular products can also have a negative impact by restricting developers, loss of distinction, and increased initial development effort. This literature review helps project managers, departments, and companies better understand NPD and its challenges. It further connects departments and modularity effects with NPD trade-offs to better understand the interdependencies between these aspects.