Product Development Gap Self-Assessment
Many factors can ultimately lead to the creation of a gap in the product development process. Think about the following questions to assist you in evaluating your own situation.
- Are you innovating faster than your competitors?
- From the time an idea is proposed, how long does it take to reach a final production stage?
- Streamlining business processes can shorten product cycles by 50-90%.
- Do you have centralized product information from which to draw - items, bills of materials, suppliers, costs, quotes, specifications, drawings, files, and compliance records – in one location and globally accessible?
- Access to and visibility of the product record at any stage in the life cycle improves competitiveness, collaboration, and communication throughout the supply chain.
- Are your software tools integrated and capable of communicating across both operating systems and physical boundaries?
- Proper systems integration eliminates the need to transfer data between internal systems, reduces IT and applications support resources, and maintains the integrity of data communicated to the supply chain.
- Synchronization between the design and supply chain helps to improve the quality of data communicated, support better collaboration, reduces change requests from suppliers, and mistakes resulting from poor data necessitate rework.
- Does your software support compliance with regulations like Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS), and regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or International Organization for Standardization (ISO)?
- The automation of this compliance data into an integrated application can eliminate the manual tracking and storage of documentation; improve the quality of the records kept by the use of workflow based processes, and automate the tracking, calculating and communication of compliance data.
The Bottom Line
Effective product development strategies will enable workers and teams to be more productive within processes, with success measured via improvement in process outcomes, and sustain higher levels of innovation resulting from virtual collaboration. By bridging the product development gap, you can reduce the time-to-market window, improve innovation, support global supply chain management, and lower product costs to gain an advantage in today’s competitive market.
