Does high products complexity &amp; production cost drive high customer involvement in product development? Author: Ellen Wendel Tutor/Examiner: Sarah Philipson   Background   The purpose of this thesis first arose when interviewing the CEO and the chief of product development of a Swedish wood company. The lack of communication between the two of them and the overall information flow within the company seemed to me brutally bad. When leaving that company a question popped up: Do a low production cost/unit and/or a low product complexity on an industrial market result in low customer involvement?   Problem focus/hypotheses   Product failure is costly and time consuming; doing it right the first time can keep a company alive and give it competitive advantages, Matzler et al (1997). Customer involvement has proven to increase the chances for a successful product launch, von Hippel (1988), Lagrosen (2005), Pitta et al (1996) and Matzler et al (1997). With the assumption that customer involvement can affect product development in a positive way, any conditions that might drive customer involvement in product development would be of interest. This thesis investigates three hypotheses concerning how product complexity and production cost drive customers involvement; H1: High product complexity positively predicts the use of high customer involvement in the product development. H2: High production cost positively predicts the use of high customer involvement in the product development. H3: High production cost and high product complexity together positively predicts the use of high customer involvement.   Method   The main study was executed with surveys sent per e-mail. The investigated populations are wood component suppliers and machine suppliers. The suppliers were chosen to get a vast range of product complexity and production cost. The hypotheses were analyzed with chi-square statistics and percentages.   To get a basic understanding of the industry, I first made a pre-study; interviewing two suppliers and telephone interviewing the head of glued edge pine panel issues at the Swedish Wood &amp; Furniture Association.   Findings   Hypothesis 1 I conclude that higher product complexity leads to higher customer involvement on both industries. This result gives more validation to the emerging theory stated by Richard et al (2004). Hypothesis 2  This thesis validates hypothesis 2 among wood suppliers. I suggest future research to validate a possible theory the states that higher production cost drive higher customer involvement. Hypothesis 2 is not accepted on the machine supplier industry since the results were inconclusive. No overall pattern was found.  However, the result indicates that the hypothesis might be correct up until a certain level of complexity, after which the relationship is negative. Hypothesis 3   I consider hypothesis 2 to be validated on the wood supplier market. I suggest future research to validate a possible theory the states that higher production cost and product complexity and production cost combined drive higher customer involvement. The thesis result indicates that hypothesis 3, on the machine supplier market, might be correct up until a certain level of complexity and production cost combination, after which the relationship is negative. Hypothesis 3 cannot be accepted for the machine supplier industry since the results are inconclusive. General findings from the hypotheses All three hypotheses indicate a positive prediction that product complexity, production cost and the two variables combined will drive the behavior of “usage or no usage” of customer involvement, regardless of industry. / <p>Opponenter: Elna Hägglund och Frida Tillmar</p>

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In today's market, companies are faced with pressure to increase variety in product offerings. While increasing variety can help increase market share and sales growth, the costs of doing so can be significant. Ultimately, variety causes complexity in products and processes to soar, which negatively impacts product development, quality, production scheduling, efficiency and more. Product variety is just one common cause of product complexity, a topic that several researchers have tackled with several sources of product complexity now identified. However, even with such progress, product complexity continues to be a theoretical concept, making it difficult for companies to fully implement advances and fully manage product complexity. More and more companies are relying on product family design to handle product variety. Broadly, a product family can be defined as a group of products sharing common elements. The advantages for companies using product family strategies can be significant: they enable efficient derivation of product variants, reduce inventory and handling costs, as well as setup and retooling time. The design challenge however, is to select the product platform to generate a variety of products with minimum deviation from individual requirements. Accordingly, the structure of product families makes designing and evaluating them a challenging process. In order to fully embrace the relationships between variety, product complexity, and product families an understanding of product complexity causes and impacts is essential. This research begins by introducing four main dimensions of product complexity within the context of a generalized definition. Product complexity indicators suitable in product design, development and production are derived. By establishing measurements for the identified indicators and using clustering techniques, a complexity evaluation approach for product family designs is also developed in this research. The evaluation approach is also applied on a component basis, to identify Critical Components that are main sources and contributors of complexity within product families. By standardizing identified Critical Components, product complexity levels and associated costs can be managed. A case application of three product families from a tire manufacturing company is used to verify that this research approach is suitable for evaluating and managing product complexity in product families. / Ph. D.

Organization theory proposes that managers exert control over the behavior of salespeople and the outcomes salespeople are expected to deliver. The purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental study was to examine the relationships between activity control, capability control, and outcome control and salesperson performance, as well as the moderating effects of product complexity, task complexity, and number of accounts on the control-performance relationships for business-to-business sales personnel. The framework for the study was based in the concept of organizational control. Data analysis included hierarchical regression of a convenience sample of 374 survey responses from salespeople to analyze the direct and moderating relationships between perceived sales management control and salesperson performance. Data were collected using Fluid Surveys. Although significant positive effects were identified between outcome control, activity control, and capability control on salesperson performance, as well as a significant negative effect of task complexity on salesperson performance, no moderating effects were found. Because sales management behavior impacts salesperson satisfaction, retention, and performance, identifying the positive impact of activity, capability, and outcome control, and the negative impact of task complexity on salesperson performance provides sales managers with important guidance when considering the elements of an effective approach to sales management. Finally, providing managers with specific guidance regarding management approach has implications for positive social change within organizations by improving salesperson satisfaction with their jobs, their manager, and the organization for whom they work.

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Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D printing, has been attracting attention from practitioners as well as academicians with its continuous evolution from being used primarily for prototyping to now end-product production. Despite this technology's current and future potential, few studies indicate that AM has not been extensively used across all industries. This dissertation addresses knowledge gaps by providing theoretical and empirical support for adopting AM through three essays that study the role of AM in restructuring supply chains. Essay 1 provides systematic support for AM implementation by developing a typology derived from technology-specific potentials and challenges to adopting AM. This study uses an exploratory research approach to collect and analyze data from semi-structured interviews of practitioners with deep knowledge of AM and supply chains from diverse industries. In Essay 2, our results show that AM adoption positively influences supply chain responsiveness and, in turn, reshoring decisions. Essay 3 compares different supply chain configurations based on traditional and AM. We developed a hybrid simulation model combining discrete event simulation and agent-based simulation and compared the performance in terms of wait time and costs. Our results indicate that under certain conditions, the centralized configuration delivers spare parts faster than the distributed configuration, contrary to previous literature findings. However, a hybrid configuration (a combination of centralized and decentralized) provides a better response (reduced wait time) than the traditional, centralized, and decentralized configurations. Collectively, the three essays provide academicians and practitioners with a more comprehensive understanding of how AM creates value for supply chains.

Research and Development engineering is at the corner stone of humanity’s evolution. It is perceived to be a systematic creative process which ultimately improves the living standard of a society through the creation of new applications and products. The commercial paradigm that governs project selection, resource allocation and market penetration prevails when the focus shifts from pure research to applied research. Furthermore, the road to success through commercialisation is difficult for most inventors, especially in a vast and isolated country such as Australia which is located a long way from wealthy and developed economies. While market leading products are considered unique, the actual process to achieve these products is essentially the same; progressing from an idea, through development to an outcome (if successful). Unfortunately, statistics indicate that only 3% of ‘ideas’ are significantly successful, 4% are moderately successful, and the remainder ‘evaporate’ in that form (Michael Quinn, Chairman, Innovation Capital Associates Pty Ltd). This study demonstrates and analyses two techniques developed by the author which reduce uncertainty in the engineering design and development phase of new product development and therefore increase the probability of a successful outcome. This study expands the existing knowledge of the engineering design and development stage in the new product development process and is couched in the identification of practical methods, which have been successfully used to develop new products by Australian Small Medium Enterprise (SME) Excel Technology Group Pty Ltd (ETG). Process theory is the term most commonly used to describe scientific study that identifies occurrences that result from a specified input state to an output state, thus detailing the process used to achieve an outcome. The thesis identifies relevant material and analyses recognised and established engineering processes utilised in developing new products. The literature identified that case studies are a particularly useful method for supporting problem-solving processes in settings where there are no clear answers or where problems are unstructured, as in New Product Development (NPD). This study describes, defines, and demonstrates the process of new product development within the context of historical product development and a ‘live’ case study associated with an Australian Government START grant awarded to Excel Technology Group in 2004 to assist in the development of an image-based vehicle detection product. This study proposes two techniques which reduce uncertainty and thereby improve the probability of a successful outcome. The first technique provides a predicted project development path or forward engineering plan which transforms the initial ‘fuzzy idea’ into a potential and achievable outcome. This process qualifies the ‘fuzzy idea’ as a potential, rationale or tangible outcome which is within the capability of the organisation. Additionally, this process proposes that a tangible or rationale idea can be deconstructed in reverse engineering process in order to create a forward engineering development plan. A detailed structured forward engineering plan reduces the uncertainty associated with new product development unknowns and therefore contributes to a successful outcome. This is described as the RETRO technique. The study recognises however that this claim requires qualification and proposes a second technique. The second technique proposes that a two dimensional spatial representation which has productivity and consumed resources as its axes, provides an effective means to qualify progress and expediently identify variation from the predicted plan. This spatial representation technique allows a quick response which in itself has a prediction attribute associated with directing the project back onto its predicted path. This process involves a coterminous comparison between the predicted development path and the evolving actual project development path. A consequence of this process is verification of progress or the application of informed, timely and quantified corrective action. This process also identifies the degree of success achieved in the engineering design and development phase of new product development where success is defined as achieving a predicted outcome. This spatial representation technique is referred to as NPD Mapping. The study demonstrates that these are useful techniques which aid SMEs in achieving successful new product outcomes because the technique are easily administered, measure and represent relevant development process related elements and functions, and enable expedient quantified responsive action when the evolving path varies from the predicted path. These techniques go beyond time line representations as represented in GANTT charts and PERT analysis, and represent the base variables of consumed resource and productivity/technical achievement in a manner that facilitates higher level interpretation of time, effort, degree of difficulty, and product complexity in order to facilitate informed decision making. This study presents, describes, analyses and demonstrates an SME focused engineering development technique, developed by the author, that produces a successful new product outcome which begins with a ‘fuzzy idea’ in the mind of the inventor and concludes with a successful new product outcome that is delivered on time and within budget. Further research on a wider range of SME organisations undertaking new product development is recommended.