A Company’s Strategy To Optimize Product Development Process In OEM Mode

Modern project management has been more widely used during the continuous development of economy and theory of management, more and more companies have begun to use project management approach to manage new product development, but none product development project management process can be applied to all stages of enterprises since the surrounding environment and their own business are in a constantly changing situation, unmatched product development process will result in some development project delay and project margins drop. Focus on the actual situation of the enterprises and optimize their own development process will be an important cornerstone of sustainable development of enterprises.A company (a wholly owned foreign enterprise) invested and built factory in China since 1995, started product development by self-made mode, at very beginning the development process can meet the request of company and the customer, but with the introduction of OEM models, lots of departments like quality control and purchasing department are not in the same location, which caused a big increase of information exchange, R&D engineer cannot handle the project properly. The original product development process cannot meet the company’s needs. Some aspects like product development objectives setting, project scope, organization structure and team settings show obvious defects. We will study in this paper, the main work is as following:Firstly, by learning and summarize the literature and theory consolidate the theoretical foundation to optimize processes and analyzes the status of the company as well as existing product development process, summed up three issues:1. the development of existing products cannot meet the project management process, the main reason is the big increasing of information exchange causing by OEM model; 2. project objectives and project scope always shift in existing product development process, the main reason is lack of control point and lack of a special team to control the project deliveries; 3. Project team and project manager cannot be competent product development since introduction of OEM model, the main reason is R&D engineer has two rules, which is not clear to the team members and always cause some issues;Secondly, analyze the problems and propose a new product development process according to the life cycle theory and project management theory. Identify and manage the project scope and boundaries to ensure the product development carried out in the correct direction by review meetings at check points; set up professional project manager to clarify responsibilities of personnel involved in product development process, and effectively improve the efficiency of product development communication, reducing product development time;Thirdly, in order to verify the effectiveness of the new process, implement optimized process in a specific OEM projects, confirmed the optimized process can solve shift issue of project target and project scope.A company’s product development process optimization studies can also be helpful to the other companies and enterprises as a guideline, and help to enrich and innovate the product development process.