The role of product manager in product development process with help of multi-criteria analysis.

Kostanjevec, Tomaz ; Polajnar, Andrej ; Kostanjevec, Metka 等

1. INTRODUCTION

The foundation for successful new product development is the creation of a corporate culture that promotes and rewards innovation. Unfortunately, many marketing managers regard their company's corporate culture as a key constraint to innovation. (Mattews, 2002) Managers, therefore, need to pay more attention to creating a culture that encourages innovation. People in organizations observe those actions that are likely to lead to success or punishment. The surest way to kill innovative spirit is to conspicuously punish those people who are prepared to create and pursue new product ideas when things go wrong and to reward those people who are content to manage the status quo. Research has shown that those companies that have supportive attitudes towards risk taking and a tolerant attitude towards failure are more likely to innovate successfully. (Francis, 2000)

An innovative culture can also be nurtured by senior management, visibly supporting new product development in general, and high-profile projects in particular.

Consequently, individual managers took a subjective view on whether they were for or against the project. Besides sending clear messages about the role and importance of new product development, senior management should reinforce their words by allowing people time off from their usual duties, so that they can develop their own ideas, make available funds and resources for projects, and make themselves accessible when difficult decisions need to be taken. An interactive model has developed idea of multi-criteria PD with additional help of CAD and CAM systems. (Kostanjevec et al, 2008)

The flow of information is used to explain how innovations take place and that they can originate from a wide variety of points. Finally, the generation of ideas is dependent on inputs from three basic components: organisation capabilities; needs of the marketplace; science and technology base.

Fig. 1 shows the kinds of attitudes and actions that can foster an innovation culture. (Jobber, 2007) The use of forecasting method as multi-criteria one is one of promising approach.

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2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND WITH APPLICATION

The creation and nurturing of an innovative culture relies heavily on the kind of leadership which can inspire passions, imaginations and energy in a company with PD. Product manager as creative leader has the following qualities:

* They design cultures that support innovation: people are encouraged to adapt continuously to constantly changing circumstances, reject the status quo and operate in a productive discomfort zone.

* They inspire people: they know how to electrify relationships between themselves and other people, and produce engagement that stimulates personal growth. They have a clear vision for the future and can motivate people to achieve the corporate mission.

* They provide insights, not solutions: they avoid simplistic answers to complex questions but provide support for exploration. In a complex environment, they recognize that there is a need to give form to what is unfolding by asking important questions.

* They maintain focus, not control: many organizations are tight on strategy but loose on vision. Creative leaders release the energy and potential of an organization by being tight on vision but looser on strategy. Rather than tight control, they encourage a healthy disequilibrium, and show in their actions how to tolerate uncertainty and live with paradox.

Product development process can be used in different groups:

A) Project teams involve the bringing together of staff from such areas as R&D, engineering, manufacturing, finance and marketing to work on a new product development project. Research has shown that assigning the responsibility of new product development to such cross-functional teams has a positive effect on new product performance (Joshi & Sharma, 2004). Specialized skills are combined to form an effective team to develop the new product concept. Its advantages include the fostering of a group identity and common purpose, fast decision-making, and the lowering of bureaucratic barriers. A similar organizational change that has reduced the product development cycle time is the bringing together of design and manufacturing engineers to work as a team. The process--simultaneous engineering--was pioneered in Japan but is being adopted by European companies.

B) Product and brand management entails the assignment of product managers to product lines (or groups of brands within a product line) and/or brand managers to individual brands. These managers are then responsible for their success and have the task of coordinating functional areas (e.g. production, sales, advertising and marketing research). They are also often responsible for new product development, including the creation of new product ideas, improving existing products and brand extensions. They may be supported by a team of assistant brand managers and a dedicated marketing researcher. In some companies, a new product development manager may help product and brand managers in the task of generating and testing new product concepts.

Usually, in trying to capture innovation as management process, simplification has led to misunderstandings. The simple linear model of innovation can be applied in only a few innovations and is more applicable to certain industries than other. For most industries and organisations, innovations are the result of technology-push model and market- pull model.

The role of PM in observed SME, which is occupied with development of energetic systems, is diverse. On the basis of absorbed interview, it has been noticed, that in amount of data and information from PD projects, it is hard to shell most fittable for company. Comprehension of different "line model" in PD is because of complexity of innovation project sometimes restrictive. An effective multi-criteria method model has been described in an article by Kostanjevec et al, 2008. Advantages, which can be established in development project, are few: combine interaction of information from company and market and mathematical correctness of results. In a variety of product manager activities, multi-criteria analysis is crucial. In the way of strategic decision can be early seen trend as deciding. Six major suggestions made by the product manager are shown in Fig. 2.

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Fig. 3 shows how product managers communicate with various firms and other external institutions, such as government departments, suppliers and customers. All this flow of information contributes to the organisation's knowledge bank. Capturing and utilising it to develop successful NP is a difficult innovative management process (Trot, 2008). Functions such as marketing, research and manufacturing have been shown in historical studies as most influential in the innovation process. Multi-criteria analysis in multidimensional space provides product development decision makers a wide range of methodologies, which are well suited to the complexity of product development decision problems (Kostanjevec et al, 2008)

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3. CONCLUSION

The review of new product projects is normally in the hands of high-ranking functional managers who listen to progress reports and decide whether further funds should be assigned to a project. They may also be charged with deciding new product strategies and priorities. No matter whether the underlying structure is a venture team, product and brand management or new product department, a new product committee often oversees the process and services to give projects a high corporate profile through the stature of its membership. Using inputs from the ideation processes, lead users analysis and multi-criteria method concept selection the product development team outputs a smaller set of high potential product concepts. Following those forecasted concept gives product development team result with great potential. This means linking engineering solutions to customers needs and vice versa.

With the powerful tool of multi-criteria analysis, SME can correctly forecast PD in an early phase of idea creation. By using all organisational and project management instruments described in proposal article, SME and its product manager can develop products which are accepted well in the market. In a variety of simultaneous projects, the project manager can compare competitive products in the market with developed multi-criteria model with speed and mathematical correctness. With additional graphic support of the model, forecasting of development is even easier.

4. REFERENCES

Francis T. (2000) Divine intervention, Marketing business, May 2004, pp. 20-2, ISNN 0745-5933

Jobber, D. (2007) Principles and practice of marketing--5th edition, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0-273-71315-9, London

Joshi, A. W. & Sharma S. (2004) Customer knowledge Development: Antecedents and impact on new product performance, Journal of marketing, Vol. 68, October 2004, pp. 47-9, ISBN 0022-2429

Kostanjevec, T., Polajnar, A., Vujica-Herzog, N. (2008) Product development through multi-criteria analysis. Annals of Daaam for 2008 proceedings of the 19th International DAAAM Symposium, ed. Katalinic, B., pp. 723-724, 2008, ISBN 978-3-301509-68-1, Vienna

Mattews, V. (2002) Caution versus creativity, Financial times, 17 June 2002, p. 12, ISNN 0307-1766

Trott, P. (2008) Innovation management and new product development--4th ed., Prentice Hall, ISBN 10 0-07-7114159. London