Improving product development efficiency

Product development has to be understood as a strategical key process and as a more integral part of the business processes of an enterprise. The efficiency of product development is so forth becoming a key factor in the competitive strategy. The increasing demands on extensively shorter time to market of products and services require the introduction of new operation models, working methods and tools in product development. The need for networking also in the product development activities is becoming more obvious and vitally important. This presentation describes an extensive development effort in Finland for improving product development efficiency in manufacturing industries. The national technology programme, jointly funded by Tekes (Technology Development Centre, Finland) and industry, was launched in the spring of 1996 and will continue until the end of 1999. Already about 130 million FIM has been allocated for a number of development projects from industry and academia. More than 100 companies are involved in the program as well as all the major technical universities in Finland. The increase in development activities of especially SMEs is one of main hoped impacts of the program and the participation of SMEs has accordingly been very active, too.