Lead time estimation method for complex product development process

As the lifecycle of a product gets shorter, the timely introduction of new products becomes an invaluable asset to most manufacturing firms. It is needless to say that the competitive edge is given to a firm with the better knowledge on how to estimate the product development (PE) process because reducing the product development time is a critical issue for manufacturing firms. However, it is difficult to estimate the performance of the PD process because of its complexity. So far, in spite of its strategic importance, only a few studies have been done. To overcome this limitation, in this study, the authors provide a heuristic algorithm that can estimate the lead time of a complex PD process by series-parallel network transformation and network reduction methods with estimates of the makespans of branch-merge types. To show the usefulness of this method, computational experiments have been carded out.