Today’s New Product Development (NPD) projects are mechatronic with a tremendous amount of electronics and software. In fact, data shows that 20-50% of warranty issues in vehicles include software as a root cause and this could be extended to similar complex systems. Today’s NPD digitalization efforts often include software, hardware, and global product development teams in implementations.
The building blocks of prevention-based digitalization in NPD includes a planning tool for advanced quality planning, requirements management, bi-directional traceability, DFMEA/PFMEA product risk tools, supply chain planning and tool sets, AI/machine learning tools, and the ability to manage complex BOMs, PPAPs, or first piece inspection gates for flawless manufacturing launches.
The competitive advantages and concepts of NPD digitalization will be shown with a case study in this presentation. Digitalization makes every field of data available for analysis whether inside the company or in the supply chain. With a tremendous amount of data available in the digitalization process, Business Intelligence, and analytics play a key role in utilizing that information.
Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to convert a process into digital information. The process performance turns into data that can be used to manage the process. The goal of digitalization is to reduce the number of steps in a process, reduce lead time, and to increase efficiency.