Introduction
In this era of "faster, cheaper and better", companies are focusing on improving the product development process. New business strategies, new organizational approaches, new business processes and new enabling technology are being used by many upcoming companies to continually improve their product development process. Based on UNICEF mobile technology innovation we will have a view of the tools that can be used to improve the process.
Outlines this process-the process have to go through the development cycle showing various stages and the players that take part in the process. In which product analysis is done to the final stage where it's working effectively.
1. Assessment-The UNICEF organization cannot improve all aspects of product development at once. The implementation the implementation of product development best practices can best be viewed as a continuing improvement thus no final conclusion has been made
2. Strategicalignment-To be successful in the mobile information technology UNICEF must have a basis for competitive advantage. In every organization needs to do a reasonable job in various competitive dimensions, it cannot be all things to all people. UNICEF must focus on one or two dimensions of competition to truly distinguish one and be successful.
Emphasize design re-use of modules, parts, cores, cells, part models, requirements documents, plans, technical documentation, simulation models, fixtures, tooling, etc. to minimize development cost and schedule.Tightly manage requirements to minimize changes that will require redesign cycles- this is where addressing new requirements in the next release or next generation product are made.Get suppliers involved early to collaborate and utilize their ideas and suggestions and to develop a design that is compatible with their process capabilities.Use product data management systems to both control product data and streamline the process through workflow capabilities. This speeds and controls the flow of information. Emphasize early analysis and simulation to minimize build and test cycles with physical hardware.
3. Analysis and improvement- Gap analysis is then employed to focus attention on the improvement opportunities that will yield the highest payoff. The categories with high weighting factors indicating their importance to the product development success and relatively low performance ratings yield the largest gaps between what is important to the organization. The areas that require the highest priority in improving the development process and will likely have the largest recompense for worthy acts. Once the large gap categories are identified, an examination of the individual best practices with lower performance ratings will help identify the specific areas that require attention. Identify and focus on the strategic levers that have low performance ratings and that are associated with the organization's intended strategy.
4. Six Sigma- This is a statistically based, problem-solving method. It improves quality and it reduces the variation of the processes. It very much deals with defining the process and trying to reduce variation. It uses statistics to quantify the root cause of the quality problem. It's a scale of process quality. It measures again the deviation of process. It has a Sigma in it, which typically you would think would make a lot of actuaries happy. Not a lot of actuaries or life companies are employing Six Sigma, because of a perceived difficult transition of utilization in a manufacturing process environment to utilization in a life company, product development environment.
5. The Stage-Gate process incorporates cross-functional teams with the same goals at any given stage and overall. For any given stage, the same goal is to get to the end of the stage with what one is supposed to complete and hit that decision gate. The gates are the decision points where you decide on a go, kill, hold, recycle, shelf or whatever it is we do when we come out with a product that was not present.
6. Bench marking- On this tool the product are involved in checking up the other mobile technologies in order to know the best innovation to include.