As the consumption trend has shifted to personal uniqueness, the traditional mass production of a single product has already been replaced by a small amount of various production to match consumption pattern. To meet challenge imposed by the market, manufacturers must change tactics and methods in their R&D activities. Consumers have already taken the high-quality products or services for granted, hoping to obtain the desired products or services that as soon as possible. The manufacturer expects to push new products or services to the market earlier than the competitors¡¦ move in order to gain extra profit margins. Higher price can be sold for a product pushed earlier to the market than a later product with the similar function. The products that lag behind in the market introduction will suffer lower prices or no profit. The manufacturer always wants to clear out the stock of existing products to control costs, and attempts to introduce new products or new services with more new functions before followers do. The purpose is to dominate the market and let followers not to enjoy profit margins. So, how to speed up the products¡¦ lifecycle should be the goal for enterprises to pursue. Recently, each enterprise emphasizes the core competencies, keep and strengthen the strong abilities of enterprises, and conducts outsourcing the less competitive products to those companies that are familiar with related manufacturing technologies. In the process a new product is developed or the modification for the product design has taken place. Questions arise as to : (1) how to transmit information to the person who must know as soon as possible? (2) how to guarantee the product information that the research personnel receive is the correct edition? Collaborative Product Commerce between the organizations will encounter more difficulties and challenges than the Collaborative Product Commerce within the organization. And this subject has already become serious challenges in the supply chain. The products function has grown more complicated, and a lot of unconfirmed factors exist in the development of new products. While the project developed carries on, customers¡¦ requirement, manufacturing technology and restriction of engineering ability, and the restriction of the supplier's engineering ability, may all influence the new product engineering. So while the new product development project carries on, because of these changes they will cause design modification or manufacturing operation modification, in order to enable development of the products to maintain integrally, and reach the goal of the project. So how to use PLM system to coordinate with among different functional organization department, and to coordinate inter-organization project team members, have become the main issues of this thesis. For Semiconductor Industry, Taiwan is the most important manufacture area of the world, from IC design, wafer fabrication, wafer probing, IC packing and final test, etc. Taiwan has a entire and strong supply chains. Count according to Dataquest, the global semiconductor assembly and testing industry subcontractor, Taiwan got the 43.7% market share in 2005, nearly have about 30% of leading disparity with No. two U.S.A. with scale of 6,641 million dollars, it is obvious Taiwan is the leading status of the industry in the whole world. This research takes case A Company as an example, and compares the new product development procedure before PLM implementation and after, including the project workflow, data access, information sharing, knowledge sharing, decision making and information security, in order to offer a reference model for the manufacturing industry especially semiconductor assembly and testing industry of Taiwan to implement PLM System.

To improve the value of enterprise, besides continuously utilizing vivacious creativities on new technology research a company also needs to quickly and constantly release new products and uplift added-values for all products. In the trend of globalization, corporations in Taiwan must meliorate their capability of product development project management to deal with the changing and dynamic environment thus create higher business profits and maintain some competitive advantages. For the optical micro-structure product development to succeed, business need to consider the external environment, internal resources and the characteristics of product development project in according with its initial resource and technical limitation then through systematic project management to accomplish it. This research adopts an architecture-oriented approach to strength the task of optical micro-structure product development project management. This research uses logic principle as a foundation, goes through (1) architecture-oriented construction approach, (2) non-architecture-oriented construction approach, and (3) comparison between architecture-oriented and non-architecture-oriented to confirm advantages of architecture-oriented optical micro-structure project management. With ¡§architecture hierarchy diagram", "structure element diagram", "structure element service diagram", "structure element connection diagram", "structure behavior coalescence diagram", and "interactive flow diagram", this thesis builds up an architecture-oriented optical micro-structure project management model, abbreviated as AOOMSPMM. Through AOOMSPMM, we are able to provide an effective construction approach hence reduce the failure risk and time cost when working on the optical micro-structure product development project management. Keywords: Optical Micro-Structure Product Development, Project Management Model, Architecture-Oriented

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<p>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.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how packaging of convenience goods is an integrated part of the international new product development process.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Finally, in order to integrate the environmental issue inthe everyday work of designers it is necessary to have thefollowing conditions:</p><p>    Environmental expertise available</p><p>    An evaluation tool in order to confirm and choosealternatives</p><p>    Education and information for designers to spreadknowledge and to motivate them</p><p>    Constant stress on the importance of environmentaladaptation</p><p>    Documentation routines and guidelines connected to theproduct development process to ensure that the issue isconsidered at every step</p><p>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.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>EcoDesign, designers, environmental productdevelopment, design for environment.</p>

<p>Due to different engineering background and limited technical prerequisites, trade-offs are needed when managing information in complex product development. The challenges faced with information management for complex product development are as much of organizational as technical character.</p><p>Information management has in this thesis been analyzed from both a technical and organizational dimension in order to obtain an integrated view and holistic understanding. The technical dimension focuses on information management systems, such as product lifecycle management systems. An information management system in itself does not solve problems in an organization; it manages at its best all types of business data while storing and retrieving information. In order to succeed, information management needs to be aligned with different needs and with a variety of domain-specific work procedures. The organizational dimension includes organizational structures, work procedures, and the designer and management perspectives on needs and benefits with information management.</p><p>Perceived benefits with integrated information management are identified as support for SE, work procedure mapping, use of disciplinary support tools, and data integrity and availability. Five technical and organizational key success factors for efficient information management are presented; usability, integration of information, motivation, information structure and organizational support. It is concluded that structured information, management support and motivation among designers are more important than customization of information management systems in order to achieve integrated information management.</p>

Globalization has led to that companies’ within the textile industry, now source manufacturing overseas. Supply chains are therefore now ultimately longer, with a lot of activities and people involved. Control and implementation of strategies is now something that companies need to considerate in the supply chain, in order to reduce lead times, meet the unpredictable demand of today’s consumers and compete against other retailers. One important task in this is for retailers to have an efficient PD and sample process, due to the fact that it's in this stage where the retailers still have time to make changes and prevent problems along the supply chain. The Conceptual Framework; describes that the textile industry is not high represented in the use lean even if the strategy doesn’t need large investments in technology or training. A great part of succeeding with lean lies in the development phase, and to build a well developed and thought out system to be able to create future products. In the methodology chapter the authors have chosen to perform a case study on a branded retailer. By conducting interviews, observations and value stream mapping, the researchers can approach the study from different angles in order to double check the results, which tends to increase the validity and reliability of a study. The study's empirical materials are based on seven semi-structured interviews with employees at the case company, two observations on fittings and a Value stream mapping (VSM) of 5 different styles. This was done in order to create a deeper understanding of the sample process and the activities involved and identify non-value adding activities. Discussion; the researchers have noticed that depending on the production country and product type, the sample process looks very different. This can be a result of that people working in the process don’t have a standardized way in handling problems and instead do it in their own way. The results that case company generated could be concluded that there are several problems in sample process, which is further discussed in the analysis chapter, where there are a number of lean tools that can eliminate the identified problems. The conclusion that the researchers made is that working with Lean PD can help the company to improve their capabilities and do more with less, by sorting out the unnecessary activities with a focus on standardizing. The literature say that VSM and 5S are most common in textile companies, but the researchers have seen, through this research, that other lean tools are applicable and appropriate in the PD as well.

We live in a time of globalization. People and events of one country often impact other countries. The term “globalization” became one of the main characteristics of today‟s world. Countries perceive themselves not only as separate nations but also as parts of the global world. On other hand, new product development field is a complex process that is vital for companies‟ growth and success. Today, in terms of globalization, success of the product can be judged by its performance on the global market. Reduction of trade barriers and duty, development of new technologies and communication channels and other factors cause a trend towards development of the global market. In such conditions, a challenging task of new product development becomes even more challenging. It transforms into a new process that aims to take advantages of global opportunities and increase efficiency and effectiveness of new products.The new product development theory is quite a researched field. Numerous studies were conducted in the field of global strategies as well. These two concepts, however, were always investigated separately and just little research has been conducted about the joint topic. There are no studies that analyze the new product development process in global companies. Brentani, Kleinschmidt and Salomo (2010) argue though that global company strategy, corporate global culture and global innovation strategy affects the new product development process that is conducted by global companies. Thus we can find a research gap in contemporary literature that studies the global development process in global companies. Thereby the purpose of the current research is to investigate and integrate diverse knowledge about this process and global company strategy. It contributes to the contemporary knowledge about the new product development process by adding global perspective to this concept. Moreover, the current study can provide a framework for companies that can be considered during the process of development of new products for the global market.Our research, therefore, aims to answer the research question: How is the new product development (NPD) process run in global companies: what are the differences with the traditional NPD model and by whom and how is this process managed?By conduction of qualitative interviews and content analysis of gathered data, the new product development process was investigated in three global companies. Further, relevant theories about new product development and global company strategy and gathered data were analyzed together. Based on this comprehensive analysis a new improved model was suggested for the new product development process in global companies. Besides this, managerial issues of this process were investigated as well and some propositions were developed.

Offshoring is a hot topic in the industrial and academic community over the last few years, evolving from a focus on manufacturing to product development and R&amp;D. Offshoring refers to the process of sourcing and coordinating tasks across national borders and can include both in-house and outsourced activities performed by a supplier. There is a lot of research guiding the decision of what, where and how to offshore, but research on how to implement offshoring strategies is rare. The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the knowledge on how companies deal with offshoring in practice, relating to strategy, planning and routines. It discusses what type of capabilities that is needed to gain the benefits of offshoring implementations. The research builds on case studies from two multinational companies offshoring product development from Sweden to captive and offshore development centres in India and China through a series of interviews, review of business documentation and other types of active engagements over time. This research highlights how the development and implementation of offshoring can be better understood by focusing on the middle management in the organization and how they relate to the top management directives when implementing an offshoring strategy.  The thesis contributes to existing theory by explaining offshoring as a process, situated in a certain context and time. It defines key routines and capabilities needed to facilitate offshoring of complex product systems. Including context, timing and sequence when analysing offshoring help explain why some organizations fail to implement offshoring initiatives. The companies had an iterative learning process to deal with offshoring, and inclusion of all levels in an organization was highlighted as a key success factor for the implementation of offshoring. The results extend current understanding of offshoring of complex products to Asia and provide useful guidelines for managers on the key issues they need to consider. / Effective outsourcing/offshoring of research, development and engineering

The literature presents a number of advantages regarding companies’ strategic focus on product design, arguing that the dimension of visual aesthetics in products may help a company to create commercial success, e.g. through product differentiation and as a means of company brand recognition. However, developing new products that have visual aesthetics as an important dimension is not without difficulty, and may lead to a number of managerial challenges. The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to describe and analyse how companies develop products that have visual aesthetics as an important dimension. The thesis describes and analyses: how the dimension of visual aesthetics affects the characteristics of the new product development process; how companies strike a balance between commercial and creative imperatives during new product development; and how companies source and collaborate using artistic design resources during new product development. Based on findings from five new product development projects and from interviews with managers at twelve Swedish designer furniture manufacturers, the thesis concludes that the dimension of visual aesthetics in products affects new product development in different ways. First, companies’ development of visual aesthetics calls for a more creative, artistic development process whereby, for example, idea generation and evaluation are often flexible in relation to plans made. Moreover, the different and subjective judgement of the aesthetic value of products has implications for new product development, e.g. that the company needs to address and balance imperatives stemming from different audiences, i.e. the designer’s self, peers, and the mass market, during product development. Also, it is concluded that the sourcing of designer resources and the composition of designer portfolios are both critical and related to companies’ desired brand image. A close and trustful working relationship between the designer and the manufacturer is a basis for companies’ successful product development. Theoretically, this research contributes to the product development literature through its findings on companies’ new product development processes in a seldom researched context, i.e. the development of designer products. Additionally, it contributes to the literature on design outsourcing by presenting new findings on the interplay between artistic design resources and managers. Moreover, it also contributes to the marketing literature by providing fresh insights into how companies balance their commercial and creative interests when developing new products. / Design och dess relation till företags marknadsföring är något som diskuteras både i akademisk litteratur och i samhället i övrigt. Genom att förstå och utnyttja design kan företaget skapa kommersiella fördelar, t ex genom att differentiera produkten från konkurrenternas och skapa igenkänning för företagets varumärke. Dock är utveckling av produkter med design som en viktig dimension inte oproblematisk utan kan leda till stora utmaningar för företaget. Tre sådana utmaningar i företag beskrivs och analyseras i denna avhandling. För det första behandlar avhandlingen hur ett fokus på design påverkar företagets produktutvecklingsprocess. Vidare studeras hur företaget balanserar kreativa och kommersiella intressen under produktutvecklingsprocessen. Dessutom behandlar avhandlingen hur företaget införskaffar och samarbetar med formgivare. Den industriella kontext som valts för denna avhandling är den svenska designmöbelindustrin. Avhandlingens slutsatser bygger på fallstudier inom väletablerade och framgångsrika företag inom denna industri. Avhandlingen visar att dimensionen av design påverkar företagens utvecklingsarbete på olika sätt. Först visar studien att de studerade företagens utveckling av designmöbler innebär en kreativ utvecklingsprocess där t.ex. idé-generering och ‑urval sällan grundas i strikta produktplaner utan i stället präglas av flexibilitet och tillvaratagande på uppkomna möjligheter. Vidare är bedömningen av en produkts designvärde subjektiv och svår att formulera i ord. Urvalet av lovande produktidéer grundas därför i hög grad på ledningens goda kunskap om design och erfarenhet inom branschen. Utöver detta påverkas företagens produktutveckling på olika sätt av det faktum att designvärde också skapas genom uppmärksamhet och uppskattning av exempelvis press, mässor och utmärkelser. Det visas också att företagens urval av formgivare är kritiskt och basen för ett framgångsrikt utvecklingsarbete. I de studerade företagen sker utveckling av produkter i nära och förtroendefullt samarbete mellan managers och formgivare. Dessutom kan företag påverka sitt varumärke genom att skapa en genomtänkt strategi för urval av formgivare och samarbetsformer med dessa.