Developing Products in Half the Time New Rules, New Tools

by Smith, Preston G.; Reinertsen, Donald G.

• ISBN13: 9780471292524
• ISBN10: 0471292524
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-10-30
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

Developing Products in Half the Time Second Edition New Rules, New Tools Preston G. Smith Donald G. Reinertsen In this era of global competition and accelerating product life cycles, the need to get new products to market faster is more compelling than ever. What was once considered fast development is now commonplace. In 1991, the original edition of this book became an instant hit as the leading guide to reducing product development cycle time. The expanded set of tools in this new edition meets the needs of today' s more demanding times. The book' s premise remains solid: time is worth money, and if you quantify this value you can buy time wisely, often to enormous advantage. Rather than pursuing development speed at any price, the authors emphasize subjecting time-to-market decisions to the same hard-nosed business logic used for other management decisions. Developing Products is unique in providing tools for trading off schedule against other business objectives. It integrates powerful,methods to manage risk and use resources effectively with proven techniques to accelerate product development. Smith and Reinertsen discuss hundreds of practical tools for reducing cycle time, describing each one' s application and limitations. Countless examples including Black & Decker, Hewlett-Packard, Honda, Motorola, and others illustrate how real companies use the tools. With six more years of implementation experience and responses from readers of the original 60,000 copies, the authors have sharpened the original tools and added new ones. New topics include: Advanced tools for calculating the cost of delayA process for shortening the Fuzzy FrontEndAlternatives to co-locating a teamHow to effectively involve customers in developing product specificationsThe role of advanced technology tools in r apid developmentMetrics for projects and processesNew method

Author Biography

PRESTON G. SMITH has concentrated on helping companies to accelerate their development since 1984, both as an internal consultant and as an independent consultant. He has 20 years of prior engineering and management experience and holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford. DONALD G. REINERTSEN has become one of the leading international experts on rapid product development since his breakthrough work in the early 1980s at McKinsey & Co. An electrical engineer and Harvard M.B.A., he teaches a popular executive course on product development at Cal Tech and is also author of the book Managing the Design Factory.

Table of Contents

Faster and Still Faster.

Putting a Price Tag on Time.

The Fuzzy Front End.

The Power and Pitfalls of Incremental Innovation.

Capturing Customer Needs.

Using System Design to Compress Schedules.

Forming and Energizing the Team.

Organizing for Communication.

Designing Fast Development Processes.

Controlling the Process.

Preventing Overloads.

Managing Risk Proactively.

Bridging the R&D--Manufacturing Gap.

The Role of Top Management.

Making Changes Faster.

Index.