NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCT

LIFE CYCLE

What is new product development (NPD)?

• To create the next product in a company’s product line a design team goes through product development process steps

• Starting with a product idea, the team moves through several stages to generate all the details and documents needed to get the product built.

Basic new product development steps

• There are five basic steps in a new product development process:

• Concept,

• Ideation,

• Design,

• Test and

• Release.

• Concept —

The concept step sets basic direction and boundaries for the entire development process by clarifying the type of product, the problem the product solves and the financial and technical goals to be achieved by the product.

• Ideation —

During the ideation step the team brainstorms to discover some of the many ways a product can solve the problem and meet internal goals.

Ideas are evaluated and the most promising are selected for further investigation.

• Design —

It’s in this step that the execution of the “best” way to create and construct the product happens.

Engineering details are generated to flesh out the high level concepts from the ideation stage.

• Test —

Testing verifies if the product meets the original goals or if additional refinement is needed.

Release —

Once testing has confirmed that the product solves the problem and will meet the company goals; it is ready to start the new product introduction (NPI) process and get the product built!

New product development steps

Stages of Product Life Cycle

• Product life cycle comprises four stages:

• Introduction stage

• Growth stage

• Maturity stage

• Decline stage

http://notesdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/product-life-cycle-stages-plc.jpg

Limitations of Product Life Cycle (PLC)

• Product life cycle is criticized that it has no empirical support and it is not fruitful in special cases.

• Different products have different properties so their life cycle also vary

• It shows that product life cycle is not best tool to predict the sales.

• Sometimes managerial decisions affect the life of products in this case Product Life Cycle is not playing any role.