Title: NPD project timeliness: the project-level impact of early engineering effort and customer involvement

Authors: William H.A. Johnson, Changyue Luo

Addresses: Bentley College, Management Department, 175 Forest St, Waltham, MA 02452, USA. ' Saint John's University, 37 South College Avenue, St. Joseph, MN 56374, USA

Abstract: Few survey-based NPD studies focus methodologically at the project level. In this study we concentrate on the project level and examine two types of acceleration practices in new product development, customer involvement and early engineering effort and the impact of each factor on project timeliness. The data consist of actual accounting information from 62 product development projects at four design centres of a plastic printing corporation. The results suggest that both early engineering effort and customer involvement had a positive effect on project timeliness. In addition, these two factors were found to be negatively correlated such that, for any particular project, one or the other was utilised but rarely both.

Keywords: new product development; NPD; timeliness; project management; acceleration techniques; early engineering effort; customer involvement; plastic printing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2008.019238

International Journal of Product Development, 2008 Vol.6 No.2, pp.160 - 176

Published online: 03 Jul 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article