NPD project timeliness: the project-level impact of early engineering effort and customer involvement

Abstract

Few survey-based NPD studies focus methodologically at the project level. In this study we concentrate on the project level and examine two types of acceleration practices in new product development, customer involvement and early engineering effort and the impact of each factor on project timeliness. The data consist of actual accounting information from 62 product development projects at four design centres of a plastic printing corporation. The results suggest that both early engineering effort and customer involvement had a positive effect on project timeliness. In addition, these two factors were found to be negatively correlated such that, for any particular project, one or the other was utilised but rarely both.