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As a result of the growing competition in recent years, new trends such as increased product complexity, changing customer requirements and shortening development time have emerged within the product development process (PDP). These trends have added more challenges to the already-difficult task of quality and reliability prediction and improvement. They have given rise to an increase in the number of unexpected events in the PDP. Traditional tools are only partially adequate to cover these unexpected events. As such, new tools are being sought to complement traditional ones. This paper investigates the use of one such tool, textual data mining for the purpose of quality and reliability improvement. The motivation for this paper stems from the need to handle 'loosely structured textual data' within the product development process. Thus far, most of the studies on data mining within the PDP have focused on numerical databases. In this paper, the need for the study of textual databases is established. Possible areas within a generic PDP for consumer and professional products, where textual data mining could be employed are highlighted. In addition, successful implementations of textual data mining within two large multinational companies are presented. Copyright c 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.KEY WORDS: product development process; textual databases; service center; call center; data mining PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSA product development process (PDP) is the sequence of steps or activities which an enterprise employs to conceive, design and commercialize a product 1 . A well-organized and coherent development process serves to ensure the efficient delivery of a final product that suits a customer's wants. Such products are truly the lifeblood of a company's long term economic existence. As such, it is no surprise that companies are