Benchmarking Product Development Performance of Manufacturing Companies Using Analytic Network Process: A Field Study

Product development is important more than ever for manufacturing firms. A well-designed performance measurement system can assess the impact of product development on the whole company. Such a system can also be utilized for motivating employees, especially product development staff. Naturally, a set of suitable product development measures can provide valuable information for managing the activities and continuous improvement of the product development process. In this paper, via our literature review, we first establish that "a suitable set of performance measures" to assess product development performance is not readily available. Then, we identified performance criteria for assessing product development process effectiveness based on competitive priorities (cost, quality, flexibility, delivery and innovation) followed by ANP analysis. Finally, using a two tier survey setting, the validity and reliability of the criteria set were ascertained, and field data for its (performance measure set) usage as an assessment tool for product development is demonstrated. The field study was conducted by participation of a sample of manufacturing companies in Turkey.