An Approach to Compare Product Development Methods
Year: 2009
Editor: Norell Bergendahl, M.; Grimheden, M.; Leifer, L.; Skogstad, P.; Lindemann, U.
Author: Vajna, Sandor; Kittel, Konstantin
Series: ICED
Section: Design Methods and Tools
Page(s): 313-324
Abstract
The manifold activities of product development are the substantial activities within a company, as these, due to their innovation character, are the foundations of the company's success. Many development theories and methods were and have been developed during the last fifty years to foster a successful product development and to gain an improved knowledge on the insight of it, i.e. not only on its results, but as well e.g. on drivers, purposes, activities, processes, procedures, methods, and tools. In order to support a better understanding of the respective rationale of product development methods, to allow an easier comparison of different methods, and to show further research opportunities, research on criteria to compare these methods has been conducted with the goal to create a comparison framework. The criteria have been grouped so far into basic concepts, integration of different domains, procedure style, adaptability and flexibility, predictability of results, and transfer. After the presentation of the criteria groups and selected product development methods, a comparison of these methods is described.
Keywords: Product development method, method rationale, comparison criteria