Researches for and development of new products

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How to improve R&D department productivity
in 3 minutes

Planning project stages and tasks New product development is vital for a company that wants to be competitive. Each company needs to know what its customers want in order to fill any gaps in the market. When starting a new product research, R&D department builds a new product development research team and the team leader plans tasks for the project. New product development (NPD) is a complex project which includes the product concept, the prototyping, the marketing strategy and the maintenance. Inherently, any new product launch is risky. To reach success in this field, it is required to map out a thorough plan which accurately states tasks and defines schedules with priorities to the most promising areas of new product research. The NPD project may be broken down into the following stages and tasks:
Idea development Make preliminary researches and evaluations of the market demand Estimating potential income and return on investment from new idea Generate product idea Check idea for technical feasibility Prototype development Make specifications for prototype Create prototype Test prototype and provide quality assurance Product launch Conduct consumer testing and get feedback Develop marketing plan Launch product Provide product maintenance
When the department management decides to develop a new product triggered by external market researches, a flexible project management tool is needed to optimize the use of project resources. By using VIP Task Manager, R&D department can conduct researches and initiate new product development projects. In Task Tree View the project leader can build project tree and split it into main stages. Each task stage can be specified with tasks. The project leader can plan tasks by start and finish dates, and prioritize to-do lists.
Tracking project progress Once work has begun on the project for new product development and research, it should be tracked to ensure everything is running according to the plan. The project leader should watch the project like a hawk. It means tracking each aspect of the project and ensuring delivery time. Depending on the complexity and number of employees on each task, this process can be difficult. Issues with product researches and technical assessment can appear faster than they can be settled. The project team should be provided with effective communication tool which allows to manage changes and be focused on prioritized tasks. VIP Task Manager offers solution for effective project tracking and team communicating. It allows to monitor and track task performance in real time. The tasks within R&D project can be controlled any time by the project leader through Notifications Panel. The project leader can supervise tasks of each employee, make task changes and leave comments. The project leader can also track task performance through Charts Panel. This panel is convenient to track several NPD projects. For example, R&D department runs three projects: “NPD Project 1”, “NPD Project 2” and “NPD Project 3”. Charts Panel allows to output progress for all projects in single Pie diagram (Bar, Line, Area and Column diagrams are also available).
Getting project reports As soon as work has been done on activities, the project team members confirm them through reporting progress. Project report summarizes project progress and informs stakeholders of what have been achieved. In NPD projects this is essential phase which allows to understand issues of new product development. The featured reporting capabilities of VIP Task Manager show all aspects of NPD projects: milestone analysis, scheduling and resource assignments. The report can be built in HTML or text view. The team members can select items (General info, Assignments, History, Notes, Attachments, etc.) needed to be included in the report. For example, for technicians and engineers it is important to show technical documents and specifications for prototype development. They can attach all technical documentation to the task “Make specifications for prototype”. When building the report, they need to check “Attachment” item to include the documentation to the report.
Research and development department staff Research and development department functions >> Researches for and development of new products Product maintenance and improvement Quality and regulatory compliance


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