Identifying Enablers and Barriers to Successful Platform-Based Product Development: A Case Study From Business-to-Business Products

Author(s):  
Jens Jorgensen ◽  
David Havens ◽  
Paul Salvatore ◽  
Alvaro J. Rojas Arciniegas ◽  
Marcos Esterman

Product development teams are facing continued pressure to develop more products in less time and with fewer resources. Platform-based developed is commonly seen as a solution to increase capacity of the product development pipeline. This research identified enablers and barriers to successful platform-based product development. This was achieved through a comprehensive literature review of the current state of the art and an exploratory case study of product development practices within a business-to-business environment from companies with significantly different cultures and experiences with platform-based product development. Key enablers identified in this research include institutionalizing systems engineering, development and communication of product development roadmaps, augmentation of phase gate review process and critical parameter characterization. Operational recommendations from this research are considered to be possible to implement without significant changes to existing processes and organizational structures.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 2475-2484
Author(s):  
T. Chatty ◽  
J. Faludi

AbstractHow do employees perceive the impact of incorporating sustainability considerations into their product development practice? In this case study, we observe how these perceptions can be shifted by teaching workshops on how to apply sustainable design methods in practice. We compare the trends for different methods on various dimensions such as creativity, design process time, product marketability etc. Results show an overall shift towards positive perception for all the methods on a majority of factors, indicating a way to ease the adoption of sustainable design into industry practice.


Author(s):  
Inna Rytsareva ◽  
Qize Le ◽  
Emma Conner ◽  
Ananth Kalyanaraman ◽  
Jitesh H. Panchal

In complex product development, coordination is the act of managing dependencies between artifacts. Socio-technical coordination is the achievement of coordination through the alignment of organizational structures and product structures. Socio-technical coordination is achieved in hierarchical product development organizations by aligning the organizational structure with the system architecture. However, within virtual community-based product development such as open source development, the organizational structure is not designed by a central authority. In contrast, the community evolves as a result of participation of individuals and their communication with other individuals working on the project. Hence, understanding and quantifying socio-technical coordination is particularly important in open-source communities. Existing approaches to measuring socio-technical coordination are based on the congruence between ideal communication and the actual communication structures within communities. The primary limitation of existing approaches is that they only account for explicit communication between individuals. Existing measures do not account for the indirect communication between individuals and the shared knowledge that individuals working on a joint project possess. Due to these limitations, the socio-technical coordination values have been observed to be very low in the existing literature. We propose two alternate approaches to measuring socio-technical coordination based on clustering techniques. We illustrate the approaches using a case study from an open source software development community. The proposed approaches present a broader and more encompassing view of coordination within open source communities.


Author(s):  
Roman Žavbi ◽  
Jože Tavcar ◽  
Jouke Verlinden

Integrated product development is a set of complex activities and its level of difficulty is additionally increased by the ever-changing business environment, primarily by functional associating of geographically dispersed human resources. The key resources for development are product developers, but it is questionable whether the existing systems are appropriate for the education of such professionals. The chapter describes the European Global Product Realization (E-GPR) course program and reflections from the perspective of participating students and company representatives. To investigate the longterm effects of the course, a survey was conducted on all present and former students, and company representatives. Students, lecturers, instructors, and company representatives all have high praise for the course, believing the acquired knowledge and experience to be invaluable for future members of product development teams.


Author(s):  
Hope Koch

This article discusses a business-to-business (B2B) electronic marketplace’s (e-marketplace’s) turnaround. National Trucking Exchange (NTX), a pseudonym, became one of the first true B2B e-marketplaces when it transferred its dial-up exchange to the Internet in 1996 (Patsuris, 2000). For 5 years, NTX struggled to conduct transactions. When the business environment changed and NTX incorporated powerful organization’s preferences, its turnaround began. NTX’s experience shows how using power and overcoming competition facilitates bringing a critical mass of competitive organizations together to form an information-technology initiative benefiting the entire industry. The article discusses NTX’s background, describes its business, and offers lessons from NTX’s turnaround. These insights are based on a case study (Dube’ & Pare’, 2003; Eisenhardt, 1989) of NTX’s B2B e-marketplace. The study spanned the dot-com boom, bust, and stabilization. The research included field visits with NTX, its organizational members, and a buyer and a seller that declined NTX’s membership invitations. Data collection included participant observations, system demonstrations, interviews, surveys, and internal and external document reviews. We interviewed the people in each organization responsible for the organization’s NTX participation. NTX is a B2B e-marketplace for the United States transportation industry. B2B e-marketplaces bring together businesses wishing to sell and those wishing to buy goods and services. They promise trading communities increased business purchasing efficiency and economy by replacing traditional, limited seller-buyer networks with a B2B e-marketplace with many more sellers competing on cost, quality, and service. Sellers can contact more buyers more efficiently. NTX’s founder and a venture capitalist group formed NTX in 1994 to solve the transportation industry’s unused-capacity problem. Unused capacity occurs when carriers deliver products along their routes and their remaining trailer capacity is empty (Patsuris, 2000). The American Trucking Association estimates that United States carriers travel 12% of their miles without a payload (Patsuris).


Author(s):  
Maria Alexandra Maassen

Abstract The digitalization process of the business activities has increased tremendously in the last fifty years, revolutionizing several fields of activity, such as communication, medicine, production, transport, as well as all aspects of the daily social, economic and political processes. Furthermore, the IT field has developed new ways of innovating, including new management models in the production field, that allow management of IT companies to become more customer-oriented in a dynamic competitive field. As technological progress is becoming present in every aspect of everyday life, the pressure for innovation and customer involvement represent the two main challenges of producing successful prototypes and final products for the IT market. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze two of the main product development business model trends in the IT field, namely Waterfall model and Agile model, the latest being an adapting strategy to increased customer requirements and the changing business environment. In order to ensure a practical approach the case study was based on the analysis of their implementation within the company Avira Soft S.R.L. The results of the study emphasized the benefits of using the Agile model at Avira Soft S.R.L starting with 2011 in comparison to the previous model of Waterfall product development. The relevance of the paper consists in the fact that the two models indicate how the IT product development business models are evolving depending on environmental factors and the need for continuous adaptation and innovation due to increased competition. The Agile model brought improvements of the Waterfall model, but also new challenges regarding the organizational culture, communication between members of the company and more pressure for continuous improvement. However these two models are an example of how the IT product development business models are evolving and they form a basis for future product development strategies.


2008 ◽  
pp. 101-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Žavbi ◽  
Jože Tavcar ◽  
Jouke Verlinden

Integrated product development is a set of complex activities and its level of difficulty is additionally increased by the ever-changing business environment, primarily by functional associating of geographically dispersed human resources. The key resources for development are product developers, but it is questionable whether the existing systems are appropriate for the education of such professionals. The chapter describes the European Global Product Realization (E-GPR) course program and reflections from the perspective of participating students and company representatives. To investigate the longterm effects of the course, a survey was conducted on all present and former students, and company representatives. Students, lecturers, instructors, and company representatives all have high praise for the course, believing the acquired knowledge and experience to be invaluable for future members of product development teams.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1138-1144
Author(s):  
Hope Koch

This article discusses a business-to-business (B2B) electronic marketplace’s (e-marketplace’s) turnaround. National Trucking Exchange (NTX), a pseudonym, became one of the first true B2B e-marketplaces when it transferred its dial-up exchange to the Internet in 1996 (Patsuris, 2000). For 5 years, NTX struggled to conduct transactions. When the business environment changed and NTX incorporated powerful organization’s preferences, its turnaround began. NTX’s experience shows how using power and overcoming competition facilitates bringing a critical mass of competitive organizations together to form an information-technology initiative benefiting the entire industry. The article discusses NTX’s background, describes its business, and offers lessons from NTX’s turnaround. These insights are based on a case study (Dube’ & Pare’, 2003; Eisenhardt, 1989) of NTX’s B2B e-marketplace. The study spanned the dot-com boom, bust, and stabilization. The research included field visits with NTX, its organizational members, and a buyer and a seller that declined NTX’s membership invitations. Data collection included participant observations, system demonstrations, interviews, surveys, and internal and external document reviews. We interviewed the people in each organization responsible for the organization’s NTX participation. NTX is a B2B e-marketplace for the United States transportation industry. B2B e-marketplaces bring together businesses wishing to sell and those wishing to buy goods and services. They promise trading communities increased business purchasing efficiency and economy by replacing traditional, limited seller-buyer networks with a B2B e-marketplace with many more sellers competing on cost, quality, and service. Sellers can contact more buyers more efficiently. NTX’s founder and a venture capitalist group formed NTX in 1994 to solve the transportation industry’s unused-capacity problem. Unused capacity occurs when carriers deliver products along their routes and their remaining trailer capacity is empty (Patsuris, 2000). The American Trucking Association estimates that United States carriers travel 12% of their miles without a payload (Patsuris).


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