1. IPD background Integrated Product Development (IPD) is a product development model, idea and method. The IPD's idea is from the "Product and Life Cycle Optimization Act" published by the US PRTM (Pet - Product and Cycle-Time Excellence), which describes the various product development modes. aspect.
First, IBM has been practiced, IBM, in 1992 IBM under the fierce market competition, has encountered serious financial difficulties, and the company's sales income stopped, and the profit declined. After analysis, IBM discovered that they were far behind the industry in several ways to R & D fees, R & D expenses and product launch time. In order to re-acquire the market competitive advantage, IBM puts forward half of the product to be launched, and the development cost will reduce the goal of the R & D cost without affecting product development results. In order to achieve this goal, IBM took the lead in applying an integrated product development (IPD) method. Under the guidance of the framework of many industry best practices, it will reach the shortening product. Increase product profits, effectively carry out product development, provide greater value for customers and shareholders.
IBM's implementation of IPD does not have been verified on financial indicators or quality indicators, the most significant improvement is:
1. The product research and development cycle is significantly shortened;
2, product cost decrease;
3. R & D expenses account for the ratio of total revenue, and the per capita output rate is greatly improved;
4, product quality is generally improved;
5, spending a reduction in the cost of the project on the midway;
Under the influence of IBM's successful experience, many high-tech companies at home and abroad adopted integrated product development (IPD) models, such as Boeing and Shenzhen Huawei company, have achieved greater success. Practice has proved that IPD is both an advanced idea and a superior product development model.
Second, IPD core thinks and framework
As an advanced product development concept, IPD is summarized as follows:
a) New product development is an investment decision. IPD emphasizes the effective investment portfolio analysis of product development and sets inspection points in the development process, and the project is continued, suspended, planting or changing the direction through a phased review.
b) Based on market development. IPD emphasizes product innovation must be based on market demand and competition analysis. To this end, IPD puts the correct definition product concept, market demand as the first step in the process, and starts the correctness.
c) cross-sectoral and cross-system synergy. With cross-sectoral product development team (PDT: Product Development Team), through effective communication, coordination, and decision-making, the purpose of pushing the product to the market as soon as possible.
d) Asynchronous development mode, also known as parallel projects. That is, through a strict plan, an accurate interface design, the original subsequent activities will be carried out in advance, which can shorten the product listing time.
e) Reuse. Improve product development efficiency by using public build modules (CBB: Common Building Block).
f) Structured process. The relative uncertainty of the product development project requires the development process to find balance between unstructured and too structured.
The IPD framework is the essence of IPD, which integrates many elements that represent the best practices in the industry. Specifically include asynchronous development and shared base modules, cross-sectoral teams, projects and pipe management, structured processes, customer demand analysis ($ APPEALS), optimized portfolio and measurement standards, IPD frameworks are shown below.
The following describes several aspects in the IPD framework.
Third, market management
Market management from external objective environmental factors survive from customers, investment, markets, affect the characteristics and life of the product. include:
1. Analysis of customer needs
It can be said that there is no software, there is no software, lack of good, timely market demand is the most important reason for project direction deviation and product failure. IPD uses a tool for understanding customer needs and determining product market positioning - $ APPEALS for demand analysis. $ APPEALS measures the customer's attention to the product from eight aspects, determining which aspect of the product is most important to customers. $ APPEALS The meaning is as follows: $ - Product price (price); AVAILABILITY; P-Packaging; P-performance (Performance); EASY TO USE; A- Assassurances; L - life cycle cost (Life Cycle of Cost); S-social acceptance (SOCIAL Acceptance).
2, investment portfolio analysis
IPD emphasizes an effective investment portfolio analysis of product development. How to correctly evaluate, determining whether companies have developed a new product, and correctly determine the amount of fund allocation of each new product, it is necessary to determine the investment profit rate of new products. Only a variety of static and dynamic determinants and calculation methods of investment profit rates are clarified, and companies can make correct judgments and decisions on product strategies, and then determine investment in product development.
Can a company can effectively master the countermeasures of investment, achieve good product funding effects, and improve fund operation efficiency, it is a big strategic issue and a task of enterprise business portfolio programs. In particular, the production enterprises that operate a variety of products must correctly determine the investment countermeasures, and must also study product structures, research the investment, output, positive and market share of various products, market growth rate, and then determine How to allocate funds for many products. This is a problem that the company's product portfolio plan must be solved. What kind of product structure is corporate? The total requirements should be in a characteristic, and the economy is reasonable. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the service direction, competitors, market demand, business advantages, resource conditions, and benefit objectives.
Investment portfolio analysis should run through the entire product lifecycle, set check points in the development process, and determine the project in the development process to continue, suspend, plant or change the direction. Usually after each stage is completed, you must do a Go / No GO decision to decide whether the next step will continue, so that resources waste can be reduced to avoid unnecessary inputs of subsequent resources.
3, measure indicator
The basis of investment analysis and review is a series of indicators that have been developed in advance, including a series of indicators for measurement of product development process, different levels or organization's work performance. Such as the measurement of the product development process has hard indicators (such as financial indicators, product development cycles, etc.) and soft indicators (such as the maturity of product development process); measuring standards have investment efficiency, new product income ratios, abandoned projects, products Listing time, product profit time, reuse of the shared base module, etc.
Fourth, process reorganization
Process reorganization in IPD mainly focuses on cross-sectoral team, structured processes, projects and pipe management. At each stage and decision point of the structured process, the cross-section team consisting of different functional department is collaborate, and the decision-making and product development of product development strategy is completed, and the project management and pipe management are guaranteed to be developed smoothly. .
1. Inter-departmental team
The organizational structure is the basic guarantee of the process operation. There are two types of cross-section teams in IPD, one is an integrated product management team (IPMT), which is a high-level management decision-making layer; the other is a product development team (PDT), which belongs to the project execution layer.
Both IPMT and PDT are composed of people from across partners, including people from different departments such as development, market, production, procurement, finance, manufacturing, technical support, and their personnel are different. IPMT consists of company decision-making staff, and its work is to ensure that the company has the right product positioning in the market, guaranteeing the project to ensure resources, control investment. IPMT manages multiple PDTs at the same time, and inspects whether they are profitable, and timely termination of a bad project, ensuring that the company has limited resources to high returns.
PDT is a specific product development team. Its work is to develop specific product strategies and business plans. In accordance with the project plan, ensure timely completion, ensure that the team will put products to the market in a timely manner.
PDT is a virtual organization, and its members work together during product development, by the project manager organization, can be a single-row organizational structure responsible for the project manager.
2, structured process
The IPD product development process is clearly divided into six phases of concept, planning, development, verification, release, life cycle, and defined a clear decision-making point in the process. The reviews on these review points are not technical reviews, but business reviews, more attention to the market positioning and profitability of the product. There is a consistent measure of decision-making points, and only the prescribed work can be completed by a decision point to enter the next decision point. Below is a typical product development process:
a) In the early stage of the concept phase, once IPMT thinks that new products, new services and new markets are valuable, they will form and appoint PDT members.
b) PDT understands the future market, collect information, and develop a business plan. Business plans mainly include market analysis, product overview, competition analysis, production and supply plan, market plan, customer service support plan, project schedule, resource plan, risk assessment and risk management, financial outline, all of this information Thinking and determining from the perspective of business, ensuring that the company will ultimately be profitable.
c) After the business plan is completed, the concept decision-making review is performed. IPMT examines these projects and decides which projects can enter the planning phase.
d) In the planning phase, PDT considers the organization, resources, time, costs and other factors, forming a general, detailed and highly correct business plan.
e) After completing the detailed business plan, the PDT submits the plan to the IPMT review. If the review is passed, the project enters the development phase. PDT is responsible for managing the planned review point until the product pushes the product throughout the development process, and the PDT team member is responsible for implementing the relevant departments.
f) In the full process of product development, the time and fees, different levels, and sectors needed by each activity.
3, project and pipe management
Project management is the key to better action of cross-departmental teams. First of all, there must be an effect that the project is to achieve, once we convert the customer's demand to the product's demand, you can make a detailed plan. Sections in the plan will be specifically divided into every function of each function, that is, this plan is not just a plan of the R & D department, and is also a common plan of the company's departments. A product is formed from concept to the listing period, which will involve many different closely associated activities, as if there is a relationship between different functional departments. Also in a project, the activities they face each other are also related, and all activities are added to the entire product development.
The time to arrange the activity, then the budget and resource allocation of each activity, you need to constantly comply with the planning in the project implementation, because no plan is perfect, so you can plan on a fine level. A certain adjustment, but the commitment to PDT cannot be changed. The process of the entire project requires the participation of PDT, so PDT exists in the final process of product development.
Pipeline management is similar to resource scheduling and management in multi-task processing systems, refers to the process of prioritizing development projects and their required resources based on the company's business strategy.
V. Product reorganization
The means for improving the development efficiency of IPD is product reorganization. Product reorganization is mainly focused on asynchronous development and sharing basic modules (CBB).
1, asynchronous development
The basic idea of asynchronous development model is to develop product in longitudinal division of different levels, such as technical layers, subsystem layers, platform layers, and the like. Different levels of work are completed asynchronously from different teams, thereby reducing the restriction of the upper layer work, and each level is directly facing the market. Typically, during product development, due to the technical or system usually depend on the lower layer, the work between the development level has mutual dependence. If a hierarchical work is delayed, the overall time will result in the overall time, this It is the main reason for the development delays in product development. By weakening the dependencies between each development level, asynchronous development of all hierarchies can be implemented.
In order to achieve asynchronous development, it is very important to establish a reusable shared base module.
2, share basic module
Common Building Blocks, CBBs refers to components, modules, technologies, and other related design results that can be shared between different products, systems. Due to the low level of sharing between the department, as the product is growing, the components, support systems, suppliers continue to grow, which will lead to a series of issues. In fact, there are many parts, modules, and technologies that can be shared by different products and systems. If the product uses these mature shared foundation modules and technologies as much as possible, the quality, progress of this product is undoubtedly And cost will be well controlled and guaranteed, and the technical risks in product development will also be greatly reduced. Therefore, through product reorganization, CBB database, implement technology, module, subsystem, and components between different products, can shorten product development cycles and reduce product costs. The implementation of the CBB policy requires the guarantee of organizational structure and metrics.
Whether it is asynchronous development or the realization of shared basic modules, a high level of system division and interface standards are required to develop, requiring enterprise-class architects to plan.
