Abstract:

This paper describes what one industrial products company, Motorola Information Systems Group has recently done to boost their success rate of new products. While using a Stage-Gate process for product development since the late 1980s, Motorola ISG determined that significant changes and enhancements were necessary in order to reduce the time spent on front end activities and to produce better new product definitions (e.g. ones which would result in both satisfied customers and good returns to the bottom line). After completing a thorough internal analysis, benchmarks of best-in-class organizations were conducted. Ideas and information from all of these efforts were used to construct a new framework for front end activities. The new front end framework for product definition highlights the need to proactively manage product development while being sensitive to the market life cycle. New products must be effectively defined in terms of customer value. These activities must also be done while simultaneously reducing the cycle time of the front end itself.