What Are the Challenges of New Product Development?

New product development refers to a series of decision-making processes from research and selection of products that meet market needs, product design, process manufacturing design, and normal production. In a broad sense, new product development includes both the development of new products and the improvement and replacement of existing old products. New product development is a key content of enterprise research and development, and it is also one of the core strategies of enterprise survival and development. The essence of enterprise new product development is to launch new products with different connotations and extensions. For most companies, improving existing products rather than creating new ones.

New products development

(A series of decision-making processes)

In order to facilitate the analysis and research of new products, classification can be made from multiple perspectives.

Classified by New Product Innovation Program

Brand new products. It refers to products produced by using new technologies and principles.

Enterprises develop new products, and effectively allocate limited people, money, and materials to urgently needed development projects to achieve the best results in new product development. The key lies in accurately determining the direction of new product development. Due to the increasingly fierce market competition and the increasing diversification and personalization of consumer demand, new product development has become more versatile,

As companies develop new products, it is important to choose the right approach. Properly chosen, suitable for the actual situation of the enterprise, can bear less risk and be easy to succeed. Generally there are four ways of originality, introduction, combination and improvement.

1. Original way. From a long-term perspective, the most fundamental way for enterprises to develop new products is to design and develop by themselves, the so-called original method. The development of new products in this way is conducive to product upgrading and the formation of corporate

New product development can be a source of competitive advantage

New product development can be strengthened

New product development is an important part of an enterprise's product strategy. The main strategies for new product development are:

Leading strategy

This strategy is to give priority to the development of new principles, new technologies and new structures in the fierce competition of products.

New product development is an extremely complicated task. From the idea of the user's needs to the formal production of the product, it has experienced many

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1. Do in-depth and detailed market research. Any company that wants to develop marketable new products cannot do without in-depth and meticulous market research. Market research includes two forms of direct and indirect research. Direct research is mainly based on market (consumer) needs, understanding the quality, packaging, performance, and price of competitors' products in the market, fully collecting information on consumers who have new ideas and new ideas, and analyzing the consumer's perception of new products Market response, including the advantages and disadvantages of existing products on the market and the potential market demand of consumers. The indirect research is to summarize and sort out the new product information feedback from market clerks and distributors, including product sales, market share and consumer response. Product developers, based on the results of the survey, solicit opinions from market salespeople, distributors, and consumers, and conduct product design and local release. During the release process, they must understand the market's response to new products. New product design must take the road of development-adjustment-test-marketing-improvement-mass-production, because the biggest flaw in one step is that it cannot be in place. Eager to build or develop new products behind closed doors, without considering the overall plan for the development of corporate brands, will not only increase the risk of new product development, but also affect the market launch of new products.

2. Form a flexible development organization. Product development is a complex and meticulous work. The characteristics of product innovation determine that new product development organizations have outstanding characteristics compared with general management organizations. New product development organizations should have high flexibility, simple interpersonal relationships, and high efficiency. The information transmission system and high decision-making power, etc., require the close cooperation of various departments such as supply, production, technology, finance, and sales to form a cooperative team. The general principle is to make new product development fast and efficient. The characteristics of new product development organizations make the forms of new product development organizations diverse. The common new product development organizations are: New Product Committee, New Product Department, Product Manager, New Product Manager, Project Team, Project Team, etc.

3. Do a good job in launching new products into the market. After the new product is designed, the company cannot launch a blind product market. Instead, it will work with marketing planners and marketing business personnel to focus on the planning plan before the new product is put on the market, including how to put the new product in the target market How to distribute new products, how to eliminate consumers' concerns and make them try new products, and finally make new products go to market in one fell swoop.

New Product Development Product Features

Successfully developed new products should have the following characteristics:

1. Miniaturization, light weight, make the product smaller in size, lighter in weight and easy to move on the premise of ensuring quality.

2. Multi-functionalization makes new products have multiple uses, which is not only convenient for purchasers, but also can increase purchase interest of purchasers.

3. A strong sense of the times, new products can reflect the spirit of the times, cultivate and trigger new needs, and form new markets.

4. Simplify, try to make the user convenient and easy to maintain on the structure and use method.

5. Conducive to protecting the environment, new products are energy-saving, or the consumption of raw materials is very low, or it is conducive to protecting the environment. Effective for elimination of "three wastes" and "three harms".

6. Strong adaptability, new products must adapt to people's consumption habits and people's perception of products.

7. The relative advantages are outstanding. Compared with the original products on the market, the new products have unique advantages, such as good performance, high quality, convenient use, easy to carry or low price, and so on.

8. Ergonomics, more consideration should be given to consumer goods.

New product development measures

The risk of new product development is very high. Senior managers may disregard the market research report and ignore it and forcefully promote his favorite product idea. The idea may be good, but the market size is overestimated. Actual The product may not meet the design requirements; the product may be incorrectly positioned in the market, an effective advertising campaign may not be carried out, or the product may be overpriced, or the product development cost may be higher than expected, or a fierce counterattack by a competitor may be stronger than before estimate.

Enterprises must do the following when developing new products:

First, a meticulous and thorough market survey must be conducted to examine the market's demand for this new product, so that the product can be put into a pre-defined target market when it is launched.

Secondly, the development needs a secure and reliable organizational guarantee. Enterprises can hand over the development of new products to their industry managers, or set up a new product development department directly responsible for all matters related to new product development, and then set up a management committee to oversee and review the development of new products.

New product development cycle approach

Continuous development of new products is a major factor in forming a competitive advantage. How to shorten the development cycle of new products is the key to successfully launch new products.

Effective leadership

In Japanese companies, the head of the new product development team has a lot of power. He is the leader, not the general coordinator. The position of the team leader is an enviable position that can be easily promoted further. In contrast, in American companies, the team leader has no real power, and his job is just coordination. He had to persuade team members from different functional departments to work together, which made him helpless in the face of problems.

2. work together

In Japan, in order to develop new products, a team was organized by the project leader, and the team worked until the new product development was completed. The team members come from different functional departments, including personnel from various departments of market assessment, production planning, design, process, and production pipeline. Although the team members keep in touch with their respective functional departments, their work is completely under the control of the project leader. The work performance is also assessed by the project leader. The project leader can also decide whether the team members can participate in the new project in the future. work.

3. Communicate with each other

Western companies always decide some important decision-making issues when developing new products. Because team members avoid conflicts and work is carried out sequentially from one department to another, communication between members is very difficult. On the contrary, the Japanese company that implements lean production has convened all team members together from the beginning and vowed to be responsible for the project. Everyone communicated with each other and settled some major issues from the beginning. Although with the progress of the project, people in some departments (such as market evaluation and product planning) do not need to continue to participate in the group activities, but because the major problem is decided from the beginning, the project can also be carried out smoothly.

4. Synchronous Development

Bringing people from all departments together allows many actions to be performed simultaneously, which greatly reduces the development cycle. In the process of developing new products, the mold design and mold processing cycle is very long. In order to speed up the development speed, the preparation and design of the mold blank can be carried out at the same time. Since the mold designer works with the designer, the mold designer obtains the approximate size of the newly designed product and the type of the part from the designer from the beginning. Thus, the blank of the mold can be ordered in advance. When the design is finalized, the blank is ready. In mass production, various tasks are generally performed sequentially, and the mold manufacturing cycle generally takes two years. According to the synchronous development method, the mold manufacturing cycle is only one year, and the time is reduced by half.

New product development attention issues

1. Develop a product development plan centered on functions

New product development is based on the realization of certain functions. After conducting market research to find out the exact needs of users, you can analyze the gap between the actual functions provided by the company's products and the objective needs. Which functions are still blank and which Features are not yet very useful and provide useful information. Obviously, after analyzing the company's research and development capabilities and production and operation conditions, a product development plan designed to overcome one of the above-mentioned shortcomings can be compiled, and the work content it includes will be carried out along the main line of function.

2. Minimize total product cost

An important prerequisite for a product to have a competitive advantage is that the total cost of the product is low. In the traditional concept, the company only considers the manufacturing cost and ignores the use cost, and believes that the manufacturing cost is determined by the production operation process. This is a one-sided point of view. In fact, the vast majority of product cost liability (more than 80% in the research report) depends on the design development and production operations departments, while the majority of the cost liability of the manufacturing department is determined by the design stage. Therefore, efforts to reduce the total cost of the product should run through the entire process of new product development, and coordinate the relationship between manufacturing costs and use costs. For example, when designing a product, on the premise of meeting the functional requirements of the user, the structure of the product should be as simple as possible to facilitate manufacturing and maintenance, thereby reducing the manufacturing cost and the use cost of the product; when designing the production operation system, Within the approximate range of product manufacturing costs that have been determined by product design, by adopting advanced and applicable technologies and optimal process solutions that are consistent with the actual conditions of the enterprise, product manufacturing costs are minimized.

3. Form a virtuous circle of new product development

The so-called virtuous circle means that the product can be updated normally. To this end, enterprises must attach great importance to the development of new products, and formulate a sound new product development work plan, and strive to achieve the first generation of products while operating, actively develop the second generation, study the third generation, and conceive the first Four generations to ensure that there are continuous new products being put on the market, so that the enterprise maintains a strong vitality throughout the production and operation process, and constantly seeks development.

4. Carry out creative thinking

Whether it is the development of new products, or small reforms of old products, they must be based on creative ideas. The development of new products stems from creative ideas. Therefore, effective creative techniques such as the intellectual incentive method, checklist method, comprehensive photography method, and shortcomings method should be used to tap potential creativity to obtain valuable product ideas. Guide people to develop three-dimensional thinking in all directions.