The thesis is conducted to investigate how packaging is taken into consideration within the new product development process and in which stages of the new product development process packaging actually is taken into consideration. Further we want to investigate if packaging has increased in importance within the activities of the new product development process, and how organizations deal with standardization of packaging for international markets in the new product development process. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how packaging of convenience goods is an integrated part of the international new product development process. We have chosen a qualitative approach. The study was conducted through in-depth interviews, face-to-face and by phone. The interviewees were selected through judgemental sampling. The sample included eight organi-zations producing convenience goods that are active on several markets. It was found that packaging always has been of importance; however, it was found that packaging has increased in importance within concept development implying that packaging indirectly has increased in importance within the new product development process. Further, packaging is included in all stages in the process, but has its ma-jor significance in the concept development phase. International organizations need to consider the level of standardization throughout the process.

This goal of this thesis is to present an overview of thedesigner’s situation in Swedish companies in relation toenvironmental work in the product development process. Theoverall aim is to describe the designer’s situation andhis/her potential to minimize the environmental impact ofproducts. Awareness of the environmental problems has led to a newapproach to product development, and today EcoDesign is beingintegrated in many Swedish companies. However, if products areto be improved from an environmental aspect, it is not onlynecessary to integrate the issue in the product developmentprocess, but designers themselves must also be given thepossibility of actually designing environmentally friendlyproducts. This makes the designer a key actor in EcoDesign. There are different levels of support for designers duringthe various stages of product development. The most commonenvironmental work within Swedish companies is to perform LifeCycle Assessment (LCA) or to introduce an environmentalmanagement system (EMS), most commonly ISO 14000. In order tooptimize a product from an environmental view, it is necessarynot only to know how the product affects the environment butalso how to evaluate different solutions and concepts. In orderto do this, LCA can be a support but it does not lead to thefinding of new solutions or concepts. There is control of theproduct’s content and restrictions on substances thatcannot be used. The focus of the product’s environmentalimpact is not only in the manufacturing and use phase but alsoin the end-of-life phase. This focus is due to a new type oflegislation, the producer responsibility law. The overall aimof this regulation is to increase reuse and recycling. To makethis economically possible, the present efforts to adaptproducts to recycling must be vastly increased. Finally, in order to integrate the environmental issue inthe everyday work of designers it is necessary to have thefollowing conditions:     Environmental expertise available     An evaluation tool in order to confirm and choosealternatives     Education and information for designers to spreadknowledge and to motivate them     Constant stress on the importance of environmentaladaptation     Documentation routines and guidelines connected to theproduct development process to ensure that the issue isconsidered at every step Integrating the issue in the product development process canclearly make significant environmental product improvements.For all companies, however, the overall aim is to make as muchmoney as possible, and it is evident that any major productchanges also have to lead to an increased customer benefit. Ifsignificant product changes are necessary for environmentalimprovements, further driving forces, such as governmentalregulations, may be needed in order to develop suchproducts. <b>Keywords:</b>EcoDesign, designers, environmental productdevelopment, design for environment.

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This degree project was performed by Marina Hultin and Lina Larsson and it is our final project in the Innovation- and design engineer programme at Karlstad University. The project was carried out during the spring semester 2007. The project comprises 20 weeks of work and 5 of these were reserved for a study of literature. Our project was assigned by Designstudio Värmland and our instructor and examiner was Lennart Wihk. Each year 50 kg of food is thrown away per person. One of the reasons for this is that a lot of the food remains in the container. We produce more food than there is a need for because of all the food that goes to waste. This also contributes to an emission of carbon dioxide of a half million tons. As assigned by Designstudio Värmland we took a closer look at the food packaging of today. The base for this project is a research project, which has been carried out at Karlstad University. The purpose was to show that if it is possible to get the most out of the food container, it is justified to use more packaging material. The packaging shall be optimized, not minimized! The purpose of the project is to examine some packings on the market that contributes to the food waste. If the food packaging is optimized, the waste of food can be reduced and at the same time the consumers will be more satisfied and also get more value for their money. Our aim was to develop three concepts of optimized packings that will reduce the food wastage. Graphic design for each and every packing is included. The work method that was used is called the design procedure. When the brainstorming was completed we decided to only include packaging for yoghurt. This decision was made because today’s yoghurt containers are difficult to empty. The project resulted in three concepts of new yoghurt containers. Prototypes were made both in CAD and as visuals. Graphic design was also made for each concept. / Detta examensarbete har utförts av Marina Hultin och Lina Larsson under vårterminen 2007 och är en avslutning på Innovations- och designingenjörsprogrammet på Karlstads universitet. Arbetet omfattar 20 poäng, varav 5 poäng består av en fördjupad litteraturstudie. Uppdragsgivare var Designstudio Värmland och handledare för examensarbetet var Lennart Wihk. Varje år slänger vi 50 kg livsmedel per person. Detta beror till stor del på att det finns livsmedel kvar i förpackningen. Eftersom vi slänger livsmedel så innebär det att mer mat produceras än det finns behov för. Den mat vi slänger bidrar till ett koldioxidutsläpp på en halv miljon ton per år. På uppdrag av Designstudio Värmland tittade vi närmare på dagens förpackningar för livsmedel. Detta arbete grundar sig i en forskningsstudie som bedrivits på Karlstads universitet. Studien visar att om det går att få ut lite mer av livsmedlet ur dess förpackning så är det befogat att använda mer förpackningsmaterial. Förpackningen ska optimeras, inte nödvändigtvis minimeras. Syftet med projektet är att undersöka några olika förpackningar på marknaden som bidrar till slöseriet av livsmedel. Genom att optimera förpackningen kan livsmedelspillet minskas och konsumenterna blir nöjdare och får även mer valuta för pengarna. Målet som sattes upp var att ta fram tre koncept på optimerade förpackningar, med tillhörande grafisk design, som minskar livsmedelspillet. Arbetet utfördes enligt designprocessen. Efter idégenereringen beslutade vi att avgränsa oss till yoghurtförpackningar, då dagens förpackningar för yoghurt är svåra att tömma. Resultatet blev tre koncept på nya yoghurtförpackningar. CAD-modeller och prototyper togs fram på alla olika koncept. Till varje koncept gjordes även en grafisk utformning.

The world is a very competitive place, every day companies from all over the globe try to be on the edge of their fields in order to keep a good distance from competitors. They have found in the new product development process or NPD the leverage they needed to build up that differentiation required to get ahead over competitors. When looking inside the NPD we decided to focus on a very critical and interesting stage, the business analysis process. The purpose sought with our research is to provide a better understanding of how small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) carry out their business analysis stage in the process of new product development (NPD), this purpose was first obtained by stating a main problem and to facilitate the answer to this main problem we proposed two research questions that were later used to review all of the related literature, which resulted in a conceptual framework 2employed to guide this study’s data collection. We decided to use the inductive approach and the use of primary data collected with the help of interviews with companies representing SMEs using a qualitative case study approach through all interviews. It is important to mention that the interviews were also designed with the help of the research questions. The results allowed us to develop a model that shows how the business analysis process looks like in the companies studied as well as to highlight the most relevant factors for the two companies studied when performing the business analysis. Finally the research let us establish some suggestions for future researches regarding the business analysis process such as the differences between small and medium enterprises and larger firms, and the cross-functional activities involved in a business analysis process in larger firms.

“Industrial cluster” is one type of agglomeration and the concept has been increasingly used and recognized as an essential part of regional development strategies and thinking in recent years. However, there has not been an explicit collection-work devoted to exploring the Critical Success Factors (CSFs). So, this thesis aims to explore such CSFs based on literature review as well as illustrative case study. The major finding of this thesis is exploration of 18 (possible) CSFs based on extensive literature review and grouping them into 5 success categories (see Table 3 for the full list of them). The contribution of each explored CSFs to the success of a typical cluster has been checked, in order to assure that each explored CSF is really functioning as a CSF. Then, SMIL as a real-life cluster with 25 years old in Linköping region of Sweden is used as an illustrative case study, in order to observe the literature-based explored CSFs in reality. In addition, based on both literature review and illustrative case, a number of relations between CSFs have been identified. In particular, such relations can be described as; some CSFs may lead to creation of some other CSFs. Illustrative case study shows that some of the literature-based explored CSFs are not observable in a real-life cluster, i.e. SMIL. The main reasons for such lack of the validity of some CSFs in SMIL cluster are mostly deal with the SMIL (association) as the node organizer of SMIL cluster. Such main reasons are; weak linkage between SMIL association and some of its actors, and/or being out of the scope of SMIL’s agenda and focus. The other finding of this thesis is that; in terms of resource, network-based clusters with network activities (such as SMIL cluster) are richer in soft resources (such as pre and post existence of knowledge in the region) than hard ones (like infrastructural resources). At the end, there are some recommendations for SMIL in order to improve its overall performance, by considering some possible CSFs.

The high level of competition and the rapidly growing technology development has created new challenges for today's businesses where they are forced to deliver more customized products at a lower price and a shorter time period. This places high demands on the companies' ability to design and develop better products in a more efficient way. In addition to developing products, the design process focuses on securing long-term success for the company by developing nourishing skills. However, to achieve an effective design process the companies must improve their ability to plan as well as use their knowledge base in a more efficient manner. Toyota's product development system is a critical component for companies to address challenges that they’re facing and offers a great potential to create significant competitive advantages. Toyota's product development system is designed to streamline the design of processes and products, as they often create restrictions on business and describes the importance of making use of a coordinated effort by several functions, and strives to integrate processes, people, technology and tools in an effective manner.   The concept of Concurrent Engineering includes parallel efforts rather than a time-consuming serial work and seeks to minimize delays in the product development process. Concurrent Engineering enables for quality products, to reach the market faster at a lower cost and allows the company to quickly and flexibly adapt to changing demands and conditions through parallel efforts. Like Toyota’s product development system, Concurrent Engineering promotes an integrated approach where multifunctional teams work towards a common goal striving to solve problems at an early stage.   Propulsion and Control in Västerås, a division within Bombardier Transportation, is currently suffering from extensive engineering changes and struggles to uphold time plans and budgets. The thesis will therefore cover the complete product development process where focus has been directed towards the processes and conditions that could enable for an effective product development process. During the thesis work the underlying causes for the problems mentioned above, have been identified. Internal documents regarding the company's current process has been reviewed and interviews have been carried out in order to evaluate the company’s current situation. During the thesis work a comparative study has been conducted at a large company within the Mälardalen-region. This study has been used as a practical example to reinforce the theoretical reasoning and has additionally allowed for further examination of a company's product development process.   The thesis has resulted in a number of suggestions for improvements, where the main action areas are covered by cross-functionality, routines, follow-up, supplier involvement and prototypes. Another action area that has been identified is front-loading which aims at examining several alternatives and solving problems as well as creating countermeasures at an early stage. These six areas were found to have a significant role in creating an effective product development process and are considered to be relevant for the company's current situation.

Innovation and new product development (NPD) are critical to firm success and are often cited as means to a sustained competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the question of which innovation programs to pursue and how they should be funded is not trivial. This thesis examines the resource allocation and NPD portfolio problem. Special emphasis is placed on the organizational and behavioral factors that influence this problem. In doing so, we adopt a hierarchical perspective and posit that the resource allocation and NPD portfolio problem acquires a unique structure depending on the level at which the problem is considered. Beginning at the firm level, each study attempts to break open a black box to understand the drivers of effective resource allocation and NPD portfolio decisions at successively more detailed levels of analysis. We begin with an analysis of the firm's total R&D investment and we show how R&D intensity (the percentage of revenue that is reinvested in R&D) depends on a combination of NPD portfolio metrics and operational variables. We then extend the analysis to reveal how a simple evolutionary process explains the often cited consistency in R&D intensity at the industry level. Next, we analyze how the R&D investment is partitioned into "strategic buckets" consisting of NPD programs that are characterized by type of innovative activity (incremental or radical). We show how time commitment, technological/market complexity, and potential disruptions to the technology/market environment influence the balance between incremental and radical programs in the NPD portfolio. Finally, we analyze how individual NPD programs are funded and how they evolve over time in an organization setting that is defined by more or less autonomy. We find that how best to allocate resources depends on two types of autonomy bestowed upon managers: autonomy with respect to NPD funding and autonomy regarding how the NPD budget is monitored and controlled. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of our work.

Abstract Today, in the industrial circumstance, to increase product¡¦s values are one of the primary sources of increasing competing edge. The product¡¦s value always base on continuous innovation of products and working methods. The findings of product¡¦s research and development (r&d) are the expertise of the business, so-called ¡uknow-how¡v. Whether these knowledge can be effectively spread, shared and reused, has significantly influenced on business. Therefore, effectively managing know-how becomes important issue of business. This paper proposed a framework and methodology for knowledge modeling. By use it to construct the knoweledge access architecture. The results provide a useful basis for reducing the time of r&d and increasing the product¡¦s value.

Abstract This study is to investigate the status quo and relationship between R&D-Marketing integration in the product innovation process and organizational performance. Based on the company registered in 2003, a target population composed of 259 Switching Power Supply(SPS¡^companies is formed. Questionnaires were completed by managers responsible for marketing or R&D-Marketing departments. E-mail survey were employed to collect the data and use correlation analysis, one-way ANOVA and hierarchical regression analysis to analysis the data. It is found that the organizational factors variations exist in the integration of department and have positive influence on various activities when perpetual department was established and the manager is responsible for both marketing and R&D-Marketing department. Moreover, the result of research shows organizational factors have positive influence on department integration, and the mutual participation of members is most important. Besides, organizational factors will affect financial performance and program accomplish by integration of R&D-Marketing respectively of organizational category and chief factor. Based on the research findings, the perpetual department for developing new product and co-operated managers are suggested. In addition, mutual participation of members and establishing information network and database to reduce the gap of information between two departments deserve more attention so that the new product¡¦s performance could be improved. Keywords : switching power supply , new product development, department integration, organizational performance