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In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) is the complete process of bringing a new product to market. New product development is described in the literature as the transformation of a market opportunity into a product available for sale and it can be tangible (that is, something physical you can touch) or intangible (like a service, experience, or belief). A good understanding of customer needs and wants, the competitive environment and the nature of the market represent the top required factors for the success of a new product. Cost, time and quality are the main variables that drive the customer needs. Aimed at these three variables, companies develop continuous practices and strategies to better satisfy the customer requirements and increase their market share by a regular development of new products. There are many uncertainties and challenges throughout the process which companies must face. The use of best practices and the elimination of barriers to communication are the main concerns for the management of NPD process. ==Process structure== The product development process typically consists of several activities that firms employ in the complex process of delivering new products to the market. Every new product will pass through a series of stages from ideation through design, manufacturing and market introduction. The development process basically has three main phases: # Fuzzy front-end (FFE) is the set of activities employed before the formal and well defined requirements specification is completed. Requirements are a high-level view of ''what'' the product should do to meet the perceived market or business need. This is sometimes referred to as the ".〔 # Product design is the development of both the high-level and detailed-level design of the product: which turns the ''what'' of the requirements into a specific ''how'' this particular product will meet those requirements. On the marketing and planning side, this phase ends at pre-commercialization analysis stage. # Product implementation is the phase of detailed engineering design of mechanical or electrical hardware, or the software engineering of software or embedded software, or design of softgoods or other product forms, as well as of any test process that may be used to validate that the prototype objects actually meet the design specification and the requirements specification that was previously agreed to. # Fuzzy back-end or commercialization phase represent the action steps where the production and market launch occur. The front-end marketing phases have been very well researched, with valuable models proposed. Peter Koen et al. provides a five-step front-end activity called front-end innovation: opportunity identification, opportunity analysis, idea genesis, idea selection, and idea and technology development. He also includes an engine in the middle of the five front-end stages and the possible outside barriers that can influence the process outcome. The engine represents the management driving the activities described. The front end of the innovation is the greatest area of weakness in the NPD process. This is mainly because the FFE is often chaotic, unpredictable and unstructured. Engineering design is the process whereby a technical solution is developed iteratively to solve a given problem〔Yassine, Ali; Braha, Dan (2003),("Complex Concurrent Engineering and the Design Structure Matrix Approach." ) Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications, 11 (3):165-177〕〔Yassine, Ali; Joglekar, Nitin; Braha, Dan; Eppinger, Steven; Whitney, Daniel (2003),"Information hiding in product development: the design churn effect." Research in Engineering Design, 14 (3): 131-144.〕 The design stage is very important because at this stage most of the product life cycle costs are engaged. Previous research shows that 70% - 80% of the final product quality and 70% of the product entire life-cycle cost are determined in the product design phase, therefore the design-manufacturing interface represent the greatest opportunity for cost reduction. Design projects last from a few weeks to three years with an average of one year. Design and Commercialization phases usually start a very early collaboration. When the concept design is finished it will be sent to manufacturing plant for prototyping, developing a Concurrent Engineering approach by implementing practices such as QFD, DFM/DFA and more. The output of the design (engineering) is a set of product and process specifications – mostly in the form of drawings, and the output of manufacturing is the product ready for sale. Basically, the design team will develop drawings with technical specifications representing the future product, and will send it to the manufacturing plant to be executed. Solving product/process fit problems is of high priority in information communication design because 90% of the development effort must be scrapped if any changes are made after the release to manufacturing.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「New product development」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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