The collapse of the Hand-off method

It is well known that Japan, once became a world leader in new product development, has made its primary goal to produce products with the highest quality. As a result, we were able to launch new products that are praised by the world one after another, we could say. Looking back on the development situation at the time of technology nation, the series of the flow of market forecasting, technology / R & D / trial production, production, and sales was a horizontal division of labour method. In terms of the balance between supply and demand, this method must have made developers and producers having more initiative in the way because consumers were on the waiting state when demand far exceeds supply.

However, looking at the current situation, which is greatly affected by the new coronavirus, and the balance between supply and demand, which reflects the global economic atrophy, it is not a simple phenomenon that supply exceeds demand. We are forced to supply to where consumer needs are being satisfied. Furthermore, we are facing the situation, which we have to create new products while purchasing awareness is declining.
Previous new product development positioned the planning and technical research area as an innovator, and they could have been a privileged class.

However, under the influence of the new coronavirus, and the situation “supply while consumer needs are satisfied” which non-one experienced before, conventional new product development (*) is becoming useless for responding to the trends of times.
(*)That conventional new product development has been classifying into innovation areas and the areas related to commercialisation. Also, with the conventional product development method decentralised by the department, so-called the Hand-off method, it is difficult to quantitatively extract the risk for the entire process until product shipment at the beginning of the development. Hence It can be said that it is difficult to secure the target corporate profit due to many design changes when the process is clogged up.

Engineering Front-End Loading

Based on this situation, to overcome the situation that has never been experienced in the past, in product development, instead of following the conventional Hand-off method, we need to create “management” which is interdepartmental cooperation. Then It is necessary to switch to an engineering front-loading system that takes into consideration the construction of an “engineering process” that integrates development and manufacturing to clarify the product/product concept that does not go back in design.

To promote this system, it is also essential to present a concrete engineering process and establish “management indicators” for education and measurement of effectiveness as well.