New Product Development - Jorgensen and Messner

...

Case Study Background

Continuing the discussion of enabling control systems and their ability to promote efficiency and flexibility, Jorgenson and Messner digress into the topic of balance between the two characteristics. They achieve this goal by conducting a field study with a medium-sized, family owned company with annual revenues around 170 million euros. The setting and mission of the organization are important to the study because they offer context into the culture and environment of the study group. Within the R&D division they focused on two particular projects in different stages of development closely. Figure 1 illustrates how they narrowed down their search. Over a period of 16 months they observed the R&D department of “Company” and collected data through interviews, studying archival data, and observation. Two interview rounds were conducted a year apart from each other. They discussed primarily the NPD projects and how those projects were run. Future development plans and management communication where also among topics discussed. Many informal interviews also took place and are discussed on page 106. Archiving the data was done so in an iterative manner opposed to a “...more structured apporach.” (Jorgenson and Messner 2009).

Division Strategy and Control

The R&D department was structured to fit the needs of NPD. Each subsidiary department had a specific role in developing new products. This form of development process was inspired by a stage-gate model (Cooper 1999). A project must meet certain criteria in order to move past a particular department (or gate). NPD projects are constantly reviewed by management and run through life cycles lasting roughly two or three years.

Culture at Company is one that is family oriented. There is a feeling of “this is the way we do things” that drives the organization. Jorgenson and Messner comment on that way of thinking, saying “The conservatism certainly did not pertain to the innovative, market-leading instruments,...” (Jorgenson and Messner 2009). Their four values also fail to promote an innovative approach. First, Customer Satisfaction, Knowledge, and People & Teams. These four core values are enforced on Company’s divisions.

Enabling Formalization

Company achieved formalization of their development strategy by publishing it in their Product Development Process Manual. Formalization allows the performers to use something material to measure their progress. An enabling mode of formalization is one in which the formalization has encouraging characteristics. The case study discusses what parts of the two projects break the formalized strategy and how employees and management seemed to be okay with that. This speaks to the flexibility of Company and their ability to act on the fly. There is a need to accept errors or deviations in order to foster a flexible work environment.

Guidance on integration is also discussed in the process manual. However, the practice of integration and switching was a mostly informal process.

Synopsis of above

Enabling control in Division is dependent upon the stage-gate model that runs the NPD process. This model recognizes the distinction between transparencies and controls.

Conclusion

The focus on enabling control in Company and, namely, Division, is the foundation by which new product development is built upon. The stage-gate model establishes a difference between feedback control at the gates, and feed-forward control during the stages, in between gates. Furthermore, they strive to achieve global transparency at the gates through strict guidelines that must be followed to meet a certain set of criteria, and internal transparency between the stages, allowing for more non-routine actions to encourage engineers to flow freely. This switch off between routine and non-routine practices and attempting to find balance between efficiency and flexibility is what Company must continue to abide by, after their switch to a new product strategy of modularity.