Plenary 10: Allan M Anderson
NPD Metrics as Continuous Improvement Tools
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Allan M Anderson |
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Profile
Allan graduated from Massey University, New Zealand with a BTech (Food) degree and PhD. His career to date has included a mix of university teaching, consulting and general management. In the early 1980’s Allan lectured in product development at Massey University and was actively involved in establishing a major in product development under the B Tech. From lecturing, he moved to 9 years of consulting, specialising in product development project management and product development management practices. In the mid 19990’s Allan moved to the New Zealand Dairy Research Institute where, in 1997, he was appointed as Chief Executive, responsible for the $40million R&D investment and around 350 staff. He is currently Professor of Product Development and Director of Marketing for the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology at Massey University. Allan was part of the establishment team for PDMA-NZ in 2007; was president of PDMA-NZ until December 2011; has NPDP certification; is an accredited NPDP training provider; was elected as Vice President Asia-Pacific in 2012; and, is currently a member of the Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award selection committee and standards committee.
Abstract
So often, when we discuss New Product Development (NPD) metrics we focus on measures of financial performance or market uptake. Obviously these are critically important in reporting NPD success and, in justifying future investment. But do they truly address those issues that underpin NPD success? The answer is clearly No. While financial and market performance measures give the end result they provide us with little or no information on how this result was achieved, or how we might improve our future performance. This paper summarises the traditional NPD metrics and classifies these as mainly “lagging” measures.
A model based on a suite of lagging, real-time, leading and learning metrics is presented, demonstrating how this suite of metrics can be modified to focus on the key areas of weakness in current company practices within the areas of strategy, process, resources and culture/climate. Specific emphasis is placed on how this model can be applied to the promotion of continuous learning and improvement across all areas of NPD.
