New Product Introduction (NPI) is the process of establishing a clear plan to take your product idea from concept to a full-fledged final product. Creating a new product means managing a ton of moving parts simultaneously. Essentially, it means that all teams are communicating effectively to facilitate the design, prototyping, engineering, and manufacturing phases. The process also carefully manages the product concept and monitors each step between the design stage and the first manufacturing run. The goal of NPI is to reduce waste, save money, speed up production and avoid miscommunication.
NPI Process is censored by experts
The New Product Introduction process is a multi-step plan that takes your product from initial idea to the market. An NPI process is carefully managed by a team of experts who track progress and perform frequent assessments at different stages to ensure the project is moving in the right direction.
The team composition:
- An NPI project manager
- Departmental representatives from engineering, financial, and marketing etc.,
- Stakeholders, as few as the project manager deems necessary
- Primary points of contact for contract manufacturers / Outsourcing
However, managing large teams with potentially conflicting ideas and interests is challenging, which is why the NPI team typically only consists of a handful of people who play a key role in decision-making and focus the communication on meeting the requirement of the NPI process.
The goal is to facilitate information across departments and know exactly what each department or individual is doing to move the project forward. It’s also designed to identify and resolve potential conflicts or disagreements between department members.
Although the NPI process can start at any point in the product development timeline but the best is when the process ideally begins just before the product moves out of the design stage. Unless a contract manufacturer is hired to refine the design for manufacturing and fabricate components, then you may decide the NPI process isn’t necessary until after the first run of products is completed and ready to launch on the market.
Operational importance of NPI
There could be miscommunication and various obstacles when product designers give little attention to the NPI process and assume their teams know how to work well together and communicate effectively with contractors. Actually, the most obvious reason to use a NPI process is to keep your teams in constant communication and ensure everyone is hitting their deadlines. However, other benefits include;
- Fast time to market because of the seamless movement from one development stage to the next without delays.
- Lower product development costs due to streamlined use of resources coupled with less redesigns and no prototypes.
- Results in higher quality end products as design flaws are spotted early by the intervention of multiple experts at every stage of NPI.
- Leads to smoother and cost-effective manufacturing because the manufacturer was looped earlier in the design process. There might be less need to re-engineer product.