NPD Projects Simulation Model Incorporating Managerial Aspects Using System Dynamics Approach

NPD Projects Simulation Model Incorporating Managerial Aspects Using System Dynamics Approach

Reem Alkadeem, Soheir Backar, Heba Haddad, Mohamed Eldardiry
Copyright: © 2017 |Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/IJSDA.2017070103
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Abstract

This work develops a system dynamic model for the NPD work system, focusing on the impact of managerial variables such as, managerial flexibility, feedback, autonomy, and Professionalism on the decision process of updating the NPD projects to cope with market uncertainties. Therefore, this model can be used as a “flight simulator” in managerial training to test the ability of different managerial systems to mitigate projects' probability of failure. As a result, this research serves to help project managers in improving the performance of the NPD projects by understanding how the NPD work system is better designed. Furthermore, the model can assist the managers of NPD projects to understand the dynamic interactions among the different elements in the NPD work system and feedback dynamics during the adjustment of accomplished tasks in response to market changes. Also, the integrative nature of the model allows illustration of the interactions between NPD project elements and macroergonomic elements, which is consistent with the cross-functional nature of NPD projects.
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1. Introduction

Academic researchers and new product developers revealed that most organizations are counting heavily on NPD projects for growth and profitability (Cooper, 1990). Alike, business managers and marketing academics agree that an essential element of an organization's long-term survival is success in NPD projects (Zhang, 1998). Accordingly, the NPD work system is recognized as a cornerstone of competition in a variety of markets (Rodrigues and Dharmaraj, 2004; Sarin and Kapur, 1990). Increasingly, the successful NPD work system has become central to any organization for achieving high levels of profitability, market share and, in the long run, gaining a significant leverage of competitive advantage (Cooper, 1990; Lebcir and Choudrie, 2011; McCarthy et al., 2006; Ulrich and Eppinger, 1995). The proposed managerial practices during that past two decades such as concurrence development and cross functional development had increased the project complexity more and more (Li and Hall, 2011). As the interactions within NPD project increases, the project complexity increases where, such interaction cause tangled interrelations which make it highly problematic to predict the impact of a single design decision throughout the NPD project (Cho and Eppinger, 2005; Felekoglu et al., 2013; Lai, 2008; Yassine and Braha, 2003). Consequently, NPD projects are more and more complex and chaotic in their performance and behavior and so, managing these projects turn out to be a complicated task (David N Ford and Sterman, 1998). As a result, the NPD projects failure become a recurring and a complex problem faces the manufacturing organization to the extended that it become the rule rather than the exception (Lebcir and Choudrie, 2011; Ottosson, 2004). Several studies were conducted to point out the causes of the problem of the NPD projects failure. However, usually organizations study the problem’s causes outside of their systems (Takahashi, 2015). Therefore, when the organization fixes the problems, while ignoring the feedback effects on other related issues, the problems happen again (Lai et al., 2001). A completely new way of thinking and approach needs to be applied when dealing with this dilemma.

As a cross discipline based on control theory, decision theory, simulation technology and computer applied technology, System Dynamics (SD) has advantages on dealing with dynamic and complex problems in complex system (Sterman, 2000). Thus, SD is a discipline for seeing wholes, recognizing patterns and interrelationships, and learning how to format those interrelationships in more effective and efficient ways (Senge, 1990). SD has been widely used in macroscopic areas such as economic, social, and ecological and biological systems (Yujing et al., 2015). Recently, many researchers such as (Ford and Sterman, 1998; Ford et al., 2013; Toledo, 2005; Baporikar, 2016) introduce SD to product development project management and use as a managerial tool to understand the behavior of organization and Micro and small enterprises (Agnes Mindila, Anthony Rodrigues, 2014). However, SD has received relatively little attention in designing work systems of NPD project,

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