Critical Success Factors of Product Development Projects in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the critical success factors (CSFs), as well as respective best practices (BPs) associated with those factors, using a case survey of the employees of Ford Motor Company working in different development centers around the world. The company's project managers were asked to respond to two structured questionnaires. The results confirm the study's assumption that the order of importance of the CSFs of the automotive industry differ from those of other industries in general. The results also reflect the importance of the front end (FE) phase in the new product development process. Regional differences were also observed. Neglecting CSFs can lead to delayed decision-making, resulting in higher development costs or cancellations of projects.

Exploring lean office in project management by means of a systematic literature review

“…Project managers are often influenced by subjectivism, wrong information, inefficient communication, relying on intuition drawn from experience, poor investment on their competences and due these factors, the decision making can be biased as well as the allocation of resources (Biedenbach and M€ uller, 2011;Aguda et al, 2021;Tsiga and Emes, 2021;Arraiza Irujo and P erez Ezcurdia, 2017;Kim et al, 2022). One way to cope properly with the projects is to constantly communicate with the clients/stakeholders about the scope changes (knowing scope management as occurring all along the full project cycle), having connection between projects and the company's key strategic priorities, controlling the cost of the project and training the team (Almeida et al, 2020;Tariq et al, 2020;Al-Tmeemy and Al Bassam, 2018;Goncalves and Figueiredo, 2008;Fossum et al, 2019;Jin et al, 2018;Lappe and Spang, 2014).…”

The Impact of Temporal Reflexivity on Time Performance in NPD Projects: A Mixed-Methods Study

“…New product development time performance is defined as the degree to which the production duration of an NPD project from inception to launch meets the specified schedule (Hartley et al, 1997). However, despite the essential role of time performance in NPD projects, project practitioners, on average, face almost one-third of their projects not being delivered on time (Almeida et al, 2020). Accordingly, improving and facilitating NPD time performance is a critical and urgent concern.…”

Performance evaluation of automotive product development team members based on a PLM system: A case study of M Automotive Products Company

“…In the fiercely competitive automobile market in China, the annual number of new automobile models has reached more than 70 since 2005. As the main management leaders in the industry, to ensure the competitiveness of products, new model development projects exist, which have short durations, high development costs, and multiproject synchronous development, leading to high requirements for the project management of automobile product development [2]. Especially in the development of new products, the automobile industry has become the project management benchmark of all new product development projects, and with the rapid development of the supply chain, the traditional organizational structure and project management method cannot support the operation of enormous automotive development projects.…”