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An empirical study of the relationship between concurrent engineering environment factors and product development performance
Abstract
With increasing competition in a global market, the environments that companies confront in 1990s are more volatile than ever. Product life cycles have shortened, new technologies have developed rapidly, and time and flexibility are gaining importance. In contrast to previous research that was focused on the manufacturing phase of product development, recent research demonstrates that the competitive factors, such as price, delivery speed, quality, and others, are determined in the design phase that occurs well before the manufacturing phase. Therefore, design is regarded as a strategy, which links between marketing and manufacturing strategies. With the rapid change in business environments and development of advanced IT, research on CE has been actively conducted in both the academic arena and the real world. However, due to the relatively short history of CE and its diverse characteristics, the previous research had some shortcomings. Attempting to overcome the shortcomings of previous research, this research examines the relationships between product development environmental factors and product development performance. Environmental factors include strategic integration, organization, communication infrastructure, customer requirements, and product development. Product development performance was measured in three dimensions of financial, operational, and overall. To identify the relationships of environmental factors with product development performance, the cases studies were conducted in two Nebraska companies, and a field survey followed. Based on the literature review and the study on information processing theory as theoretical background, initial research questions and a research model were developed. Initial research questions and a research model were further elaborated upon through the findings of the two case studies, and the hypotheses for a survey were constructed. Data were collected from the members of APICS and PDMA. A total of 149 US business units participated in this research representing a response rate of approximately 34 percent. ANOVA and some other statistical techniques were used for the statistical analyses. The results of statistical analyses mostly answered the proposed research questions, while some of them are only partially answered. According to the survey results, it is identified that the strategic integration of functional areas, customer-oriented product development, a balanced product development approach among environmental factors, and simultaneous application of organization-oriented and IT-oriented approaches, have positive relationship with product development performance. However, project size and oversufficient resources were indifferent to the performance. In general, the results confirmed the propositions about the relationship between product development and performance that were popularized in modern management approaches, such as BPR and TQM. The findings from the case studies reinforce the survey results.
Subject Area
Business community|Management|Industrial engineering
Recommended Citation
Hong, Suk-Ki, "An empirical study of the relationship between concurrent engineering environment factors and product development performance" (1996). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9703781.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9703781