Systematic cost management and innovation process for product development

Abstract

Today's success within a head-on competition calls for continuous development of the product in terms of functionality, quality, and costs. Development projects that aim at quick response are usually based on reuse of existing concepts. A variety of product development tools are available today, however their usability at the development of existing product concepts varies. Cost estimation and product development use data from previous product generations as input. Decomposing the product into subsystems and creating new conceptual aspects for them may obtain considerable benefits. The functionality of modern products is delivered through multi-disciplinary technical systems and efficient development should be carried out within all technological domains involved. Improvements, either on cost or functional aspects, call for innovations; new concepts are searched because a reductionist, one-disciplinary approach results in partial optimization. New approaches for systematic processes are needed for generating innovative solutions from existing product concepts and architectures. The approach of the study is based on product and concept definitions, design and development processes in literature, which are reflected against today's industry practice. As a result a new systematic approach to systematic cost management and innovation process is presented.