Improvement of new product development process by evaluating the existing development approach: Lesson learned from pharmaceutical and ICT companies

Abstract

The article discusses the implementation of the NPD process design method, while at the same time considering the existing product development applied by the company, to have early development improvement ideas. It is involving nationwide companies from two industries: pharmaceutical and ICT-related. The approach is using the PDP Design Method and SWOT analysis (as part of the 'existing design process' analysis). The result shows that using the approach, the improved design ideas are obtained: agility of the process, development time reduction with concurrent approach, lean initiatives, and evaluation of process iterations. Future research can be done related to the analysis of existing product development in the PDP Design Method and the usage of other tools to study the issue. It is also interesting to study this approach for companies that don't have a "formal"product development process yet.