Abstract The main motive for this research arises from the fact that the research has been scarce on verification and validation (V&V) activities from the management viewpoint, even though V&V has been covered from the technical viewpoint. There was a clear need for studying the management aspects due to the development of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, and increased significance of V&V activities. ICT has developed into a turbulent, high clock-speed sector and the importance of V&V activities has increased significantly. As a consequence, companies in the ICT sector require ideas for improving their verification and validation activities from the product development management viewpoint. This study approaches the above mentioned goal from four perspectives: current V&V management challenges, organisational and V&V maturities, benchmarking another sector, and uncertainty during new product development (NPD). This dissertation is qualitative in nature and is based on interviewing experienced industrial managers, reflecting their views against scientific literature. The researcher has analysed the obtained material and made conclusions. The main implications of this doctoral dissertation can be concluded as a need to overcome the current tendency to organise through functional silos, and low maturity of V&V activities. Verification and validation activities should be viewed and managed over the entire NPD process. This requires new means for cross-functional integration. The maturity of the overall management system needs to be adequate to enable higher efficiency and effectiveness of V&V activities. There are pressures to shift the emphasis of V&V to early NPD and simultaneously delay decision-making in NPD projects to a stage where enough information is available. Understanding enhancing V&V methods are a potential way to advance towards these goals.

Today's global economy requires many organizations to co-ordinate work across a variety of intra and inter-organizational boundaries (Armstrong & Cole, 1995; Lipnack & Stamps, 1997). Global competition, re-engineered product life cycles, mass customization, and the increased need to respond quickly to customer needs are just some of the more pronounced trends currently driving organizational change (Grenier & Metes, 1995; Miles & Snow, 1986; Miles & Snow, 1992). An organizations growth and profitability is largely due to the strategies of globalization. Firms developing products with global applications must build competencies to connect and leverage knowledge on a worldwide basis (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1998). In several industries product development is a crucial ingredient and therefore factors such as cost of development, cycle time and increased productivity are key drivers for market share and profitability. Product development is an expensive process particularly in the engineering and technology intensive segments. Technological advances have enabled many companies to assemble teams of employees from across the country or around the world into global teams to solve complex organizational problems (Lipnack and Stamps, 1997). Such teams are sometimes temporary, culturally diverse, geographically dispersed, and electronically communicating collections of individuals (Kristof, Brown, Sims, and Smith, 1995). These teams allow organizations to increase efficiency and effectiveness by tapping the knowledge, skills, and expertise of employees around the globe, increasing opportunities for information or knowledge exchange through expanded social networks (Wellman 1996). A large amount of investment is spent in human resources and hence ways to optimize the spending by leveraging global resources, directly helps the bottom line (Govindarajan & Gupta 2001). Models that could be used to understand better team development and effectiveness have been limited to those based on the traditional colocated group perspective. Theory development and empirical research are needed to help managers better understand and respond to the challenges that global teams face (Furst, Blackburn & Rosen, 1999). A literature review conducted found though team effectiveness has been fairly well researched the extension of the topic and as applied to global teams remains a gap. This study attempts to understand team effectiveness and its relevance when applied to a global team in a product development environment. The study involves developing a suitable model and understanding the causal relationships between the identified factors and explains the model based on the findings. Review of Literature The study reviewed a vast amount of literature relating to teams and small workgroups and summarized findings under; Team Definition, Team Types and Nature, Team Composition, Task Design, Team Development, Team Processes, Organizational Context and Global Teams. The literary review suggests that though research is steadily increasing, empirical studies on performance and effectiveness are limited. There has been very few studies on effectiveness as applied to global teams. Literature review on the subject of global teams, suggests that these teams, face even greater challenges because of their geographical separation, diverse cultures, and language. The study identified factors as applicable to global team effectiveness based on previous studies and calibrates them with findings in general team and workgroup study. The study considers Task design, Team composition, and Organizational context factors and attempts to empirically determine causal relationships with Team Processes and Team Effectiveness. Objectives and Methodology The objectives of the study are as follows: 1 To develop and validate a conceptual model that explains global team effectiveness in a product development environment. 2 To establish relationship between team design, team composition, knowledge management context and senior management context towards global team effectiveness in a product development environment. 3 To illustrate the application of the validated model and relationships for developing interventions to enhance effectiveness in a product development environment through a qualitative case study. The methodology adopted was to study contemporary team effectiveness models from literature and get an understanding of the key variables and factors that influence effectiveness. Next, based on prior studies on global teams, a model was developed using an established effectiveness model and extended it to global teams. The main study comprised of analyzing responses from 376 participants from 64 projects working together as global teams. The conceptual model developed consists of two key factors measuring effectiveness namely; Product Development Effectiveness and Team Process Effectiveness. The enabling factors, that are called as ‘global factors’ in the study that influence effectiveness in the model are; Team Design and Composition, Senior Management Context and Knowledge Management Context. Measures defining each factor were developed, refined and checked for reliability and validity. The factor analysis conducted suggested that Product development effectiveness variables include; Schedule compliance, Functional completeness, Product Quality, Cost compliance and Innovative Problem solving. Team Process effectiveness includes; Internal motivation in the team, Looking forward to team challenges, Willingness to share Knowledge, Conflict resolution, Openness to Learning and Quality team interaction. Similarly, factor analysis suggests Task design and team composition be combined as Team Design and Composition. The variables included are; Clear Goals, Well defined output or deliverable, Use of Judgment, Adequate skill sets (Technical, Functional, Program Management and Diversity) and Right size. Knowledge Management Context variables following factor analysis are; Knowledge management practice, Perceived importance of knowledge management, adequate infrastructure and Existent reward system. Senior Management context variables are; Global Senior management support, Management review support and Easy information flow. In order to achieve the objectives of the study a detailed Structural Equation Modeling using Partial Least Squares method was conducted. The measurement model and structural model was assessed, path coefficients studied, moderating effects studied and model evaluated for goodness of fit. In addition, an in depth case study is conducted and the model is applied in a practical scenario. Results and Discussion The study suggests the importance of global teams in a product development environment. This is particularly so as distance, time, culture and technology interface make it all the more important for global teams to have means of measuring effectiveness. It is also necessary to have an understanding of the enabling factors aiding effectiveness. The study suggests a model for measuring effectiveness in global teams involved in product development as; Meeting milestones and timely delivery of the output, Meeting product functional and technical requirements, Quality of output delivered, Cost and budget targets and Innovative problem solving are typical measurements of effectiveness. The model encourages using Team Process Effectiveness as a measure and suggests it has a moderating influence it has on Product Development Effectiveness. The Team Process Effectiveness measures are; Internal motivation amongst members within the team, Identifying if the team looks forward to challenges, Willingness to share knowledge with each other, Resolving conflicts within the team in a positive manner, Openness to learning and Quality team interaction. The model developed indicates that all paths defined and relationships are positive and the model is structurally valid. As hypothesized, factors, Team Design and Composition, Knowledge Management Context and Senior Management Context has significant relationship with Team Process Effectiveness. Further, Team Process Effectiveness has positive causal relationship with Product Development Effectiveness. Knowledge Management Context and Senior Management Context have a significant and positive relationship with Team Process Effectiveness. The study confirms the moderating influence Team Process Effectiveness has on Team Design and Composition, Senior Management context, Knowledge Management Context with Product Development Effectiveness. The in depth case study on a department of 75 members of product development global teams provided the insight into the empirical analysis, strengthened it and helped understand several other aspects of global teams. Conclusion The study provided an in-depth understanding of global team effectiveness by reviewing literature and identifying variables that influence global teams in a product development environment. A model was developed, empirically validated and tested. The model includes effectiveness factors and enabling factors and relationship between factors have been explained. A case study spanning a period of five years on a global team involved in product development was conducted and the model applied in practice. This study suggests that the model can be used by organizations and practicing managers for understanding, developing and leading global teams involved in product development.

The purpose of this study was to increase the knowledge for both academia and practitioners on how to integrate sustainability aspects in product development by studying current research and comparing these findings to empirical material retrieved from an industrial company. Seco, which functioned as the case company of this study, was used as the source for the empirical data collection. The study used a deductive research approach, which implicates that the literature has steered the collection of the empirical material. In the literature, eight key drivers and seven challenges for sustainable product development were identified to be significantly important. The drivers were categorized as either internal or external for an organization and the challenges were all categorised as internal. Of these eight drivers, one internal and one external driver was identified at Seco to be particularly important. The internal driver was the corporate sustainability strategy from Sandvik Group, which is the corporation Seco is part of, and the external driver was upcoming and existing regulations. Moreover, all six challenges were found to be relevant for Seco. These were handling trade-off situations, short-term economic thinking, lack of information in early phases of product development, measuring sustainability, sustainability strategy remains at the strategic level, and perceived risk of implementing sustainability. This study also examined what attributes that are important in decision support tools to enable the integration of sustainability aspects in product development. To identify important attributes in this study, Seco’s current decision support tools at the strategic, tactical, and operational planning levels were analysed by putting the theoretical framework in relation to the empirical material. From the analysis, the initial seven attributes from the theoretical framework were complemented with the following five attributes identified as important: a top-down approach that focuses on integrating sustainability on all planning levels of the product development process, enabling follow-up on strategic decisions, reduce the room for free interpretations, reduce the complexity and amount of time to use decision support tools, and lastly methodologies to support the collection of the required information to use decision support tools. Thus, it is emphasized that researchers and practitioners continue to develop new and existing decision support tools so that the sustainability of products can be defined and measured. A focus on developing methodologies that guides how the required information can be obtained to use decision support that incorporates all life-cycle phases of a product is also identified as important.

This report covers the development process of an induction powered toaster for the company C3. This included its interior function as well as its exterior design. The project resulted in a functional prototype of an induction powered toaster bearing a design language that fits into C3s existing product catalogue.

At the electro remelting slag (ESR) facility at Uddeholm, cylindrical steel ingots are produced in several different sizes. The ESR process requires a “starting step” that consist of a 20mm thick steel plate and is a little larger than the diameter of the ingot. During casting the steel plate is inevitably welded to the ingot, also a protective slag layer is also present and flows on top of the melt when the ingot is produced. This layer is sacrificial and is removed before forging. The plate consists of a different and unwanted material composition and must be removed at some point to ensure the best material properties of the ingot. Current process steps at Uddeholm causes the steel plate to be smeared out on the high-quality ingot. The “impure” part of the ingot leads to extra waste and costs after forging. The ingots are cast vertically but needs to be positioned horizontally to be transported to the forge, this is done using an overhead crane and a clamp. This maneuver exerts excessive stress that damages the crane and the clamp sometimes fails and drops the ingot. Because of the high-risk steps during ingot handling as well as the extra waste that is created due to the starting step, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a solution that can: move the ingots from a vertical to a horizontal position in a controlled manner, a method to remove the starting step before forging and reduce the overall risks during ingot handling. The goal is to develop a complete concept that solves the problems mentioned so that the solution can later be realized.To get a deeper understanding of the current procedures and problems, visits and meetings at Uddeholm were carried out. This master thesis builds on the principle of the product development process. Interviews with operators, managers, and other impacted employees at Uddeholm were conducted in order to specify a product specification. To make the project more fathomable, six sub functions were defined. Later a concept generation session using the principles of brainstorming was held with engineers and managers at Uddeholm to find new, plausible solutions to the problems. The results from the session were reviewed and some solutions were discarded directly. Solutions that passed the screening was scored using a weighted decision matrix based on a Kesselring matrix.The chosen concepts were: milling to remove the starting step, “rotary axis grab” to rotate the ingots, a conveyor belt to transport slag, a vacuum and conveyor belt to remove chips, a roll bed with V-pallets to handle and transport the ingots, and let the slag fall of naturally when horizontal. These solutions fulfill almost all of Uddeholm’s requirements and will significantly increase the safety and profitability. The new solutions also bring in high flexibility for production and will free up time for the operators.The lifting tool of the solution needed to be structurally verified to prove it is a valid option. This was done by analyzing the maximum stress in one part of the tool. The results gave that it was indeed a feasible solution.The whole product development process has proven helpful for this machine system. It has especially proven useful for documenting all decisions made throughout the project. This makes it easier for Uddeholm to adopt the solution and develop it further and later realize it.

During early stages of the design process, ideation methods are used to generate a set of potential solutions based on a particular need. Solutions to design problems generally require both technology and user actions (or tactics) of some sort, although solution ideas may omit explicit mention of either technology or tactics. Previous research suggests that an explicit consideration of tactics in early-stage ideation enables design teams to improve the quantity, quality, variety, and novelty of their idea sets. In this paper, a novel ideation method known as the Random Prompts method is presented, and its performance is evaluated against a Brainwriting method. The results show that the Random Prompts method improves the overall quantity, novelty, and variety of idea sets over the Brainwriting method. In addition, the techniques used to encourage tactics ideation in both methods cause a significant increase in the fraction of ideas containing tactics when compared to sample ideation results from the literature. These conclusions hold value for improving design space exploration and co-development of tactics and technology.

Given that the focus of strategic management research is understanding the determinants of firm performance, and that product development capabilities have been shown to influence firm performance, the research question this dissertation attempts to answer is: what factors influence a firm's product development capabilities? Building on the resource based view and evolutionary theory, this dissertation proposes that firms leverage knowledge generating resources to modify or develop their routines. Firm level routines are theorized to influence the capabilities of the firm. This dissertation focuses on two firm-level product development capabilities: effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness refers to a firm's ability to develop desirable products and efficiency refers to the firm's ability to develop those products quickly. The knowledge generating resources this dissertation examines is the firm's prior experience in product development and the firm's relational resources pertinent to product development. Specifically, this dissertation develops theory on four types of experience: market niche, component technology, platform technology, and general product development. Additionally, theory is developed regarding the effects of platform relational resources, as well as the breadth and depth of co-developers a firm utilizes in the development of their products. Using the videogame development industry as the empirical context, few hypothesized relationships are statistically or substantively significant. Prior experience with component technologies lowered the effectiveness of a firm' product development capabilities, but were found to increase efficiency. In addition, older firms tended to create more desirable products despite controlling for the four types of experience which may suggest that the age of the firm contributes something to the firm's ability to create desirable products beyond specific types of experience. This dissertation makes contributions to the theory on how capabilities are developed and enhanced by introducing mechanisms regarding how firms can leverage knowledge generating resources to improve their capabilities. More specifically, this dissertation provides contributes to the product development literature as well as the literature on how experience and relational resources influence a firm's product development capabilities. / Ph. D.

With increasing demands from customers, companies face the challenges of shortening the new product development (NPD) period, reducing development cost and increasing development efficiency. High quality and efficiency of NPD can increase the chance for companies to be competitive on the market. Forming up cross-functional teams becomes a popular way of maximizing the knowledge then increase the development quality and efficiency. However, it is challenging to integrate the resources from different functions and even more challenging when the resources are from different countries. To overcome the integration challenges can increase the efficiency of NPD projects therefore finally win global market shares. This study’s purpose is to identify and analyze integration challenges experienced by a verification team involved in global NPD and to suggest how those challenges can be managed by answering two research questions: 1) What are the integration challenges with the current work process encountered by the global verification team? 2) How can the integration challenges be met in the improved work process? The case study is used as the research method in order to get deep insight of the challenges that a global verification team faces. VSM Group AB, an international leading sewing company is selected as the case company.  The case team, a global verification team locates both in Sweden and China, plays the role of verification work within NPD process. The case team verifies the design and new products in the process.  Through interviews, observation and literature reviews, the challenges in this global verification team are identified. It is found that the case team needs to overcome language barriers, culture difference, task planning and formalization and standardization on work performance during integration. Based on the investigations, a set of solutions are proposed in the end to meet the challenges. These solutions are an improved work process, work performance system, training program and uniformed documentation. These proposals are inspired by the integration mechanisms such as formalization and standardization, special reports etc and then fit them into the case team context. By simulation and evaluation the solutions within the global verification team, the feedback on the proposals helped for improvement. This case study at VSM is an empirical example of implementation of integration mechanisms into a real life context.

Product development is a particularly critical intervention point for the transformation of society towards sustainability. Current socio-ecological impacts over product life-cycles are evidence that current practices are insufficient. The aim of this thesis is to form a foundation for sustainable product development through the integration of a sustainability perspective into product development procedures and processes. Literature reviews and theoretical considerations as well as interviews, questionnaires, observations, testing and action research through case studies in various companies have indicated gaps in current methodology and have guided the development of a new general Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD). This method combines a framework for strategic sustainable development based on backcasting from basic sustainability principles with a standard concurrent engineering development model. A modular system of guiding questions, derived by considering the sustainability principles and the product life-cycle, is the key feature. Initial testing indicates that this MSPD works well for identification of sustainability problems as well as for generation of possible solutions. However, these tests also indicate that there is sometimes a desire for a quick overview of the sustainability performance of a specific product category. This is to guide early strategic decisions before the more comprehensive and detailed work with the MSPD is undertaken, or, alternatively, when an overview is sufficient to make decisions. In response, a Template for Sustainable Product Development (TSPD) approach is presented as a supplement to the MSPD. To generate products that support sustainable development of society it is necessary to combine sustainability assessments with improvements of technical product properties. An introductory procedure for such sustainability-driven design optimization is suggested based on a case study. For maximum efficiency of a company in finding viable pathways towards sustainability, it is also necessary to coordinate different methods and tools that are useful for sustainable product development and integrate them into the overall decision-making processes at different levels in companies. To find gaps in the sustainability integration in a company’s decision system, an assessment approach is suggested based on case studies. A general conclusion from this research is that the support needed for making sustainability-related decisions are not systematically integrated in companies today. However, this thesis also indicates that it is possible to create generic methods and tools that aid the integration of sustainability aspects in companies’ strategic decision-making and product development. These methods and tools can be used to guide the prioritization of investments and technical optimization on the increasingly sustainability-driven market, thus providing a foundation for competitive sustainable product development.

A presente pesquisa procurou aperfeiçoar os conhecimentos no que se refere à gestão do desenvolvimento de novos produtos no segmento de componentes da indústria de materiais de construção. Não obstante a vasta literatura sobre a gestão do desenvolvimento de produtos, ainda existe uma lacuna no que diz respeito a este tema no setor. Procurou-se, então, identificar o grau de formalização, as etapas e as características da gestão do desenvolvimento de produtos na indústria de materiais de construção, como também as convergências e divergências entre os casos práticos e a literatura levantada. O desdobramento teórico desta pesquisa teve por base uma compilação dos principais modelos de gestão do processo de criação, como também do mapeamento do setor da indústria de materiais de construção. Por sua vez, o desenvolvimento empírico amparou-se na pesquisa qualitativa, predominantemente exploratória, baseada na técnica de estudo de casos múltiplos, contando com uma amostra de quatro empresas: Perflex, Deca, Cecrisa e Tigre. Verificou-se que existe um razoável nível de aderência entre o que preconiza a literatura e o que de fato acontece nas empresas pesquisadas, todavia, existem algumas contribuições relevantes que podem ser consideradas. Observou-se que nesse setor industrial os projetos derivativos são predominantes, com grande direcionamento para projetos topológicos; que o processo de captação de idéias realizado pela Cecrisa e pela Tigre diferenciase das demais empresas, obtendo as mais diferentes informações; que na etapa de desenvolvimento do conceito do produto a Cecrisa sobressai por inserir depoimentos de especialistas sobre a imagem da linha e a atualidade da idéia, o que poderá ser utilizado nas suas peças promocionais. Destaca-se, ainda, na montagem do produto, pois o faz em etapas iniciais, utilizando a matéria-prima e o processo produtivo finais. E a Deca, Cecrisa e Tigre realizam o lançamento interno do produto, distinguindo-se pela forma como é feito, e por não ter sido encontrado nenhum caso na literatura que inclua essa etapa no processo. É importante ressaltar a falta de aplicação de alguns critérios de Clark e Wheelwright (1993) nas empresas estudadas. Estas se diferenciam bastante das empresas utilizadas na pesquisa dos autores citados, pois são empresas pequenas com distâncias hierárquicas menores, onde acontecem constantemente reuniões formais e encontros informais para discussões e esclarecimentos sobre projetos. Com este estudo foi possível conhecer a realidade das indústrias de materiais de construção, a qual não se encontra em más condições, pelo contrário, está atualizada com os novos conceitos que envolvem o tema deste trabalho, gestão do desenvolvimento de novos produtos, com um processo e uma estrutura formal e organizada. / This study tries to improve the knowledge of the management of new products development in the industry of construction materials. Despite the vast literature on the management of the development of the products, there is still a gap in this subject related to the sector. For this reason, this study also tries to identify the degree of formalization, the phases and the characteristics of the management of the products in the industry of construction material, as well as the convergences and divergences between the practical cases and the literature studied. The empirical development of this research was based upon the compilation of the chief models of management of the process of creation, as well as the mapping of the sector of the industry of construction materials. In its turn, the empirical development had as its base a qualitative, prevailingly exploratory, research, based on the technique of study of multiple cases, counting on a sample of four companies: Perflex, Deca, Cecrisa and Tigre. It was verified that there is a reasonable degree of disparity between what the relevant literature states and what it is done in the target companies; nevertheless, there are some excellent contributions that can be taken into consideration. It was noticed that in this industrial sector derivative projects prevail, many oriented to topological projects; that the process of capture of ideas and information carried out by Cecrisa and by Tigre is different from that of the other companies, getting the most varied information; that in the face of the conceptual development of the product Cecrisa stands out for inserting testimonials of experts on the image of the line and the up-dated character of the idea, which may be used in the advertising pieces. It also stands out in the assembling of the products for doing it in the initial phases using raw material and the final productive process. Deca, Cecrisa and Tigre make the internal launching of the product, differing from others by the form of doing it, and for the effect that no similar case has been found in the relevant literature that includes this phase into the process. It is important to note the lack of application of some of Clark and Wheelwright\'s principles (1993) in the companies studied. This target companies differ largely from the companies used in the research of the authors mentioned, for they are small companies with smaller hierarchical distances, where formal and informal meetings taken place, constantly, for discussions and clarifications about projects. With this study it was possible to learn about the reality of the construction materials industries, which, by the way, is not badly off; on the contrary, it is up to date with the new concepts of the theme of this study, the management of new products development, with a process and a formal and organized structure.