Systematization of product development process, continuous improvement and performance: a case-study of an automotive company / Sistematização do processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, melhoria contínua e desempenho: o caso de uma empresa de autopeças

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

Product development process (PDP) has received special attention from companies due to it is recognized as a source of competitive profits. Through its systematization companies can reduce their costs and development time and increase their product quality. To get and effective systematization it is necessary to continuously improve the PDP so that it can follow the continuous necessity of develop better products to be launched to the market. When compared with other process the PDP presents special characteristics such as creativity and non-measurable activities that become its continuous improvement (CI) management more complex. The number of researches that discuss how CI can help the PDP systematization is too small once this discussion still focuses production process into companies and the discussion of the PDP systematization only discusses the improvement of activities that belong to PDP. It is not clear to define activities of CI when they are part of PDP subjects. The main goal of this research was to identify which activities can contribute with CI of PDP and to analyze the impact of these activities on its systematization, studying a case of an automotive company. It was included on the case survey all activities that belongs to PDP and can contribute with its CI and also activities that belongs to the CI process and can be applied to PDP as a support of other processes to get their improvement, including the PDP. During the case research it was collected recent data of company performance and history information regarding changes on its PDP model and practices; this research into the company allowed us to identify CI activities on PDP and the results of the implementation of these activities. To analyze the effectiveness of CI activities applied on PDP it was selected six concluded product development projects which were developed on different periods of time and then it was compared their results through some key performance indicators defined previously for the research. Those results demonstrate the effectiveness of the PDP systematization due to CI activities done during the evaluation of the product development projects in that automotive company. This research presents as contributions a survey from the literature about the relation between CI and PDP and the characterization of the activities executed in a practical case of systematization. The research presents a discussion regarding the results obtained by that company with the PDP systematization. It was possible to understand - using project performance indicators, interviews and the study of the PDP systematization - how those activities had positively intervened on projects results, which benefits they brought to the company and which gaps the systematization still keeps.

ASSUNTO(S)

processo de desenvolvimento de produtos sistematização melhoria contínua systematization product development process continuous improvement

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