Proposal of a NPD Diagnostic Method to Identify Improvement Opportunities

Abstract

This paper proposes a cause-effect diagnostic method to aid in the identification of New Product Development (NPD) improvement opportunities, called the Diagile Method. The proposed method is based on the CRT method and incorporates best practices of project management and activities to identify relevant opportunities for improvement. Templates are provided to assist in each phase of the Diagile application and a tool is provided for conducting effective interviews with NPD personnel. The main Diagile outputs are a current reality tree and a personalized portfolio of NPD improvement projects. A controlled experiment involving two independent groups was performed to evaluate the method at a large multinational office supply manufacturer. The results of this research suggest several managerial implications for improving the NPD process. The first is that effective diagnosis plays an important role in improving the NPD process. A cause-effect diagnostic method enables a healthy discussion among multidisciplinary NPD teams seeking to improve NPD to make the right choice of NPD improvement projects. Finally, the company reported that Diagile has proved to be an excellent method to analyze the NPD process and identify its problems.