Identification and Modelling of Product Development Process Activities: Time and Cost Analysis in SME's

The intense competition in global market along with constant changes in customer demands have forced companies to re-think some of their business processes in order to survive and stay competitive. Product development is one of the key business processes for any competitive or global company. The implementation of a product development process must fit in its technical, cultural, and most importantly financial needs. SME's, usually, don't have a clearly understanding about their product development process (PDP) in terms of resources and costs required. This paper presents ongoing research focused on the application of a PDP in SME's. Three stages are considered for this: PDP analysis and definitions, Activity Based Cost (ABC) parameters identification and finally an analysis of the PDP costs. IDEF0 was used as a tool for supporting the PDP analysis, ABC parameter definitions and modelling. Each PDP activity was defined in terms of its cost. A Brazilian water filter elements manufacturer has been chosen to test the initial ideas of this research. The research shows that the proposed approach can be helpful to understand the importance of the resource costs (human and equipment) within the PDP.