Product Development
A reengineered product development process reliably brings product lines to mass production at an international motorcycle manufacturer
An international motorcycle manufacturer repeatedly had to terminate development projects due to time, cost, and quality deviations because there was no consistent and objective evaluation at key milestones throughout the project. KBC worked with the client to realign the product development process for architectures and lead vehicles and developed corresponding gateway checklists.
The Customer
International Motorcycle Manufacturer
The client is an international manufacturer of motorcycles. The companyâs development projects frequently resulted in deviations in schedule, cost, and quality because there was no consistent and objective evaluation of milestones throughout the project. Although a product development process for new models existed as a guideline, it was rarely applied in practice. To make matters worse, the timeline of the existing product development process was partially outdated and, for example, did not sufficiently account for the increasing importance of mechatronics in the product. The elements used up to that pointâsuch as a purely indicative schedule or generic gateway checklistsâdid not cover essential subprocesses, such as those in the areas of E/E, procurement, functional safety, and virtual validation. As a result, critical interdependencies between the functional departments remained unclear, and each vehicle project essentially had to reinvent its schedule from scratch instead of building on a common, reliable foundation.
The Project
Redesigning the Product Development Process in an Interdisciplinary Manner
KBC, in collaboration with the client, revised and updated the generic product development process based on lessons learned from the functional departments. To this end, the project team conducted a comprehensive analysis of the existing PEP processes and created transparency regarding their interconnections as well as critical paths in the development process. This transparency was essential for identifying genuine weaknesses in the interaction between departments, rather than merely addressing individual symptoms. With the involvement of representatives from all relevant departments, the team developed a new, coherent, cross-departmental product development process for the architecture and the lead vehicle of an entire model series.Â
To ensure that this new product development process is actually applied in day-to-day workâand not merely used for guidance, as was previously the caseâKBC developed supplementary checklists and report templates for the key development milestones, which are consistent, practical, and sufficiently streamlined. The checklist for the first gateway was significantly revised and streamlined so that it was ready for use by the time the next major vehicle series was launched. In addition, the project team established a new methodology that allows hardware configurations to be described in detail using standardized specifications, rather than relying, as before, on inconsistent, informal descriptions for each vehicle project.Â
A key factor in the success of this initiative was that the new product development process was technically sound, was understood and supported by all levels of the relevant functional departments, and was consistently enforced by management as a mandatory framework for all vehicle projects. Without this broad acceptance and clear backing from management, the new process would have run the risk of being just as ineffective as its predecessor.Â
The result
A standardized product development process reduces development time by 10%
By the end of the project, we had developed coordinated gateway checklists with clear task descriptions and measurable objectives, as well as a clear schedule and assigned responsibilities for each development milestone. The new product development process was approved by top management and reduced development time by approximately 10 percent. This reduction was made possible, in part, by the project team consolidating the new synchronization plan for architecture and the lead vehicle into 43 key milestones, rather than working with a multitude of inconsistent, project-specific schedules as had been the case previously.Â
Going beyond mere process documentation, the project established processes, reports, and roles that were actually put into practice, thereby bringing about a genuine shift in mindset within the company: The new product development process was not only adopted but also enshrined as a binding framework within the committees and actively implemented by the functional departments. This provided the customer with a solid foundation for bringing future product lines into series production more reliably in terms of time, cost, and quality, rather than repeatedly struggling with deviations from targets as had been the case previously.
