Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In order to minimize the proportion of unsuccessful projects in new products development (NPD), managers have become concerned in understanding which factors have an impact on the success of new products. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the critical success factors (CSF) when developing new products in technological based companies (TBCs). The data was obtained through a survey in 62 small TBCs of two sectors: the medical and hospital equipment and the process control automation, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. This has resulted in a sample of 62 new product projects considered successful and 42 unsuccessful, from the firms’ point of view, developed in the last five years. The questionnaire was structured based on eleven management factors, deployed in 64 variables. The association of these variables with the project result (successful or unsuccessful) was measured through their respective contingency coefficients. Thus, we sought to determine which variables, considered in isolation, could explain new product’s success. We also tried to reduce the individual variables by using factorial analysis techniques, where three main components were associated to new product success: target-market characteristics, execution quality of NPD activities and integration between the areas involved in NPD.

In Brazil, the industry of agricultural machines and implements represents a significant growth potential, focusing on the increase of product exportation as an alternative to reach better-distributed merchandise value throughout the year, thus aiming at overcoming the problems of internal seasonality. It is therefore necessary for the industry to develop products, whose lesser cost and adequate quality levels allow meeting the needs of major producer customers and the Brazilian market, which is characterized by a constant search for technological solutions and sophisticated products. Even with the growth potential of this sector, its products development process continues to present problems, management included, resulting in poorer performance of projects and products and Companies should accept those problems as actual and concrete facts, so that actions may be initiated to prevent long lasting unsolved situations and eventual barriers to the company competitiveness. By means of a descriptive exploratory study, the purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the main difficulties encountered by large-sized Brazilian companies, located in the State of São Paulo, which manufacture agricultural machines and implements.

Numerous practices and principles are available to improve the company’s Product Development Process (PDP), including multifunctional teams, integrated development process, integration of market evaluation to product development, and product life cycle analysis. Indeed, the importance of PDP systematization and organization is widely recognized, and the existing reference models offer a representation of the PDP. However, most companies fail to incorporate these practices into their routine to improve their PDP, since the implementation of a reference model or the PDP transformation process are influenced by the companys organizational structure. This paper identifies and discusses several critical aspects of the PDP transformation process of SMEs, based on an analysis of the implementation of a reference model in a Brazilian SME. The analysis of this experience enabled us to pinpoint various difficulties attending the transformation of the PDP, which we then compared with the literature on the transformation process. This comparison led to the identification of critical points for the SMEs structure and organization for PDP improvement. These observations are expected to support the design of PDP transformation models, thus helping SMEs to enhance their competitiveness.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the reference model architeture used in the development of a reference model for pharmaceutical Product Development Process. The model was created founded on renowned methods as Concurrent Engineering, Stage Gates and Product Based Business. It was developed using legislation and information from interviews with professionals of Brazilian pharmaceutical companies and information from Project Management. This architeture supported the development of a reference model for the pharmaceutical PDP management, which is adjusted to the Brazilian companies’ reality and demand.

Today, businesses depend on strategic relations with their customers and suppliers to create value to develop product and to obtain better market-share. Designing products to match the processes and supply chains, processes to match product platforms and supply chains, and supply chains to match the product platforms and process are the ingredients in today’s fast developing markets. If this co-design is done well up front with sufficient focus product development process managing, product will cost much less overall and the time-to-market will decrease substantially. However, the evidence supporting supplier integration is to less clear than evidence on the positive contribution of customer integration in product development process. Considering this problem, the purpose of the present paper is to supply a path aiming to identify managing techniques and practice for the involvement of suppliers in PDP. A model for product development process managing in supply chain was proposed. The model focuses on the following factors: outsourcing process, involving supplier into PDP, knowledge management and design considerations.

The companies of vanguard understood that the real competition is not made among companies, but among supply chains. The supply chain management (SCM) concept is the logistics extension, while the logistics management is concerned with the organization flows optimization. This paper intends to divulge the level of the knowledge and the formalization of logistics and SCM already set up by the suppliers of Brazilian automotive industries. The SCM recognized that the internal integration is not enough for the competitiveness achievement. The automotive segment can be considered representative in logistics and SCM practices in Brazil deserves to be noticeable. In order to achieve this, it was accomplished an applied, exploratory, descriptive and qualitative survey, through inductive approach. The technical procedure used was a survey. The data collection was carried out through questionnaires sent to fifty representative suppliers of automotive industry, with the return of 64% answers. The results of the survey showed that the main impediment in the implementation of the SCM concept is precisely the incoherence in the culture of the companies surveyed about the logistics and SCM, concerning the partnerships and the exchange of information.

Many successful technology forecasting models have been developed but little research has explored the relationship between sample set size and forecast prediction accuracy. This research studies the forecast accuracy of large and small data sets using the simple logisticl, Gompertz, and the extended logistic models. The performance of the models were evaluated using the mean absolute deviation and the root mean square error. A time series dataset of four electronic products and services were used to evaluate the model performance. The result shows that the extended logistic model fits large and small datasets better than the simple logistic and Gompertz models. The findings also show that that the extended logistic model is well suited to predict market growth with limited historical data as is typically the case for short lifecycle products and services.

Regional clusters at different stages in their life-cycle, provide opportunities for benchmarking regional and trans-regional strategies for innovation and change management. The paper reports on trans-regional knowledge transfer and benchmarking strategies used to enhance the alignment of SME, operators and other stakeholders in regional oil and gas clusters in two regions with ongoing projects. These were part of separate regional initiatives to enhance innovation and competitiveness in the supply chain through support for SMEs as key repositories of niche expertise and local knowledge relevant to the competitiveness of large operators in particular and to the cluster and the region in general. The Western Australia and the UK North Sea oil and gas clusters are used as examples to highlight the recurring sociotechnical problem: solution scenarios that arose in facilitating communication and coordination of diverse stakeholders within and across regional clusters. This is part of a wider set of case studies developed by the network in the oil and and gas and automotive supply chain sector.

New product development is a business process with many functional interactions in a company. The concurrency of these interactions must be managed in order to meet the preestablished schedule, budget and scope. The issue of procurement is central to a succesful project. When a new project belongs to an aerospace program this issue is even more crucial. And when the aerospace program belongs to a developing country such as Brazil, the core issue involves its budget and schedule planning. This article addresses the question of procurement in a small company designing a new satellite camera for the Brazilian Government. The procurement process was mapped, a monitoring structure was created and performance indicators were developed. The performance indicators are discussed to understand the leverage of each kind of purchased item and each process step on costs and schedule.

Outsourcing is related to the action which an organization deals with its suppliers through a kind of business contract where a specific activity or service has been hired to be made. The outsourcing of some activities has become a common practice in the industry, nowadays. It reduces costs, significantly, in the production process and, at the same time, adds some values to the business organization. However it is necessary to measure the performance of these activities. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric method useful to measure comparative performance. It has a wide range of applications measuring comparative efficiency. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a multiple criteria decision-making method that uses hierarchic structures to represent a decision problem and then develops priorities for the alternatives based on the decision-maker’s judgments. This paper presents an integrated application based on DEA and AHP to evaluate the efficiency of subcontracted companies in a Brazilian aerospace factory.