Product development process in the Brazilian autoparts industry: management practices and trends

This paper presents the results of a research survey taken among managers who have responsibility for product development in Brazilian autoparts companies. This research is an investigation about management practices in the product development process (PDP). Some management issues were examined, such as reference models, organisational structure, performance metrics, methods and tools, partnership, and others. In the last decade, this industry underwent a broad process of restructuring, this was especially due to Brazilian economy deregulation, with management implications in PDP as well as in its activities, and the research results show that companies are improving their management practices in PDP. Some of the results are: there is a wide dissemination of PDP reference models, but they are only partly implemented; there is application of methods and tools to problem solving but their integration should be improved; development teams are used to carry out PDP activities; and matrix organisational structure type is adopted by some companies, but functional structure is still widely used. The study also identified that follow-source projects are the most common type, platform type projects have been adopted for one quarter of the companies, and systemists are the most evolved in PDP management practices among the surveyed companies. Regarding trends, companies address an increasingly reducing number of innovation cycles that require effort to increase development speed, but with no impact on project quality, and there is an expectation that local units will get greater autonomy of product development, especially in those activities where they have the capability.