New product development – empirical studies in the UK

The practical application of the theoretical methods for New Product Development (NPD) and for gathering the voice of the customer has not been widely reported in the literature. This paper reviews previous studies on NPD and presents the results of empirical studies that were conducted in four UK companies in 2001. The literature search focused specifically on sequential engineering, Concurrent Engineering (CE) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD), and the basic activities involved in the early phases of development through to the point of manufacturing planning. Hence it also covered methods to gather the Voice of the Customer (VoC). The main findings of the industrial studies are presented. These are centred on each company's general information, products, NPD processes and methods for gathering the VoC. The results show that the NPD methodologies applied in the four companies vary significantly in their detailed applications, relative complexity and sequence; however, their basic principles were found to be consistent with the theoretical methods reviewed during the research. The same was found with regard to the methods for gathering customer needs. In addition, an analysis of the products developed within the companies revealed that there was good potential to apply CE and QFD in at least one of the products studied in each company.