“We didn’t meet our bottomline target this year, as we couldn’t launch new products as planned!”. This failure phenomenon is common across companies, which thrive on business growth through introduction of new products. Time to Market is a comprehensive approach, which redesigns the New Product Development process to crash the time taken to launch successful new products. This approach builds in processes to systematically capture the customer’s voice & translate them into new product features, defines Gate criteria to filter ideas at each stage and integrates project management tools to monitor the launch right from conceptualization to commercialization.

The approach has the following steps:

• Mapping the current process and detailing the current problems, issues and expectations.
• Defining metrics for the processes, data collection for establishing the current level and setting targets
• Redesigning the processes with Gate Criteria for each NPD Phase, embedded with Risk Management and Project Management tools, to meet targets
• Establishing the NPD Structure

This NPD structure comprises of NPD teams working on different products and Project champions facilitating those teams for timely launch of those products. Each NPD project is reviewed through a decision board, which meets on a defined frequency subject to the availability of necessary data for taking the decision. The Terms of Reference (TORs) guidelines defined as a part of the process detail out the data required, Gate Criteria and the decisions to be taken at the end of each phase.

Statistical experimental design is used during the initial experimental phase in the NPD process to reduce the number of experiments to crash the NPD time. The data from these experiments is used for effective Technology transfer from lab to plant till commercialization. Detailed plans are made for launching the product along with the marketing team. Focus is also given on capturing the learnings of the process for future references.

The methodology involves the use of tools such as Four Field Process Mapping, Quality Function Deployment, Concurrent Engineering Tools, Business Potential Evaluation matrix, Sensitivity analysis, Statistical Experimental Design, Technology Transfer plan, Project Management tools, Terms of reference guidelines for each gate (TORs).

This approach is best suited to the core manufacturing sectors, which thrive on new products like Pharmaceutical companies, Agrochemicals, Automobiles, Textiles and Heavy Chemicals.