What is New Product Introduction (NPI)?
Companies always aim to be competitive and valuable to their clients. They survey their clients to figure out what they desire, and brainstorm ideas for products that might transform into tangible products that suit their needs. Businesses closely analyze the ideas for future products to evaluate the appropriate path of development to be taken.
New Product Introduction (NPI) is a method that brings the idea from an original working concept to a highly refined and reproducible finished product. Since NPI requires a significant expenditure in time and money, careful preparation takes place at any step of the way to ensure that the outcome is worth the effort.
Why Implement New Product Introduction (NPI)
Every business in the market seeks to develop the right product, at the right time and the right cost. Thus, implementing the NPI process may help them in their road to achieving and meeting their customers needs and business goals. Here are some of the many advantages of the NPI approach:
- Lower Development Cost: By integrating the Voice of Consumer (VOC) into the start of the project, the design team will eliminate late design updates, frequent iterations, and repetitive costly evaluation checks.
- Faster Time to Market: By reducing the time of development, the product can reach the customer and start earning sales more efficiently.
- More Effective Production: using the best principles of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFM/DFA) efficiently, products are built with the process in mind.
- Improved Product Quality: The NPI process integrates resources aimed at ensuring that the product satisfies consumer expectations and that the process is capable of delivering quality products on a regular basis.
How to Implement New Product Introduction (NPI)
A New Product Introduction approach may contain a variety of phases or gates. The phase gate scheme keeps managers aware of the status of the project and ensures that all operations are done on schedule. There are a total of six project phase requirements and they are as follows:
- Define
- Includes the description of potential criteria for the product to be integrated into the development process
- Describes the consumer needs for such a product, the scale of the demand, the expected revenue and profit forecasts.
- Prioritizes the product being considered when various new opportunities are compared and the “better” one put into development.
- Feasibility
- A feasibility analysis is done to decide if the project/product will be successful.
- Preliminary design methods and time estimates would be reviewed.
- Confirms that if the core target requirements can be met, the specified consumer expectations can be met.
- Develop
- Creates small-volume models or a nearly high-confidence prototype that is able to reach the production stage
- Distributes finished designs to main clients
- Captures input from consumers and enhances products
- Validate
- Design improvements are possible due to the outcome of validation checks but are very expensive.
- The process risk is being evaluated and discussed.
- The key stages of the production process are being developed and reviewed.
- Product analysis and testing plans are being developed and the sample components are being completed.
- Implement
- Manufacturing techniques are optimized and tested by pilot constructions and power tests.
- Method reporting and quality management are being developed and implemented.
- Evaluate – Continuous Improvement
Evaluate the output of the method to offer relevant reviews. It is necessary for businesses to aim for “Kaizen,” a word that implies continuous/incremental improvement. We are constantly searching for opportunities to enhance the manufacturing process.
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