Enhancing the new product development process in a materials processing operation

A manufacturing enterprise wishing to enhance its product innovation capabilities needs to assess its position, and determine which of its existing capabilities it needs to keep and enhance and what new capabilities it will need. This is particularly true when the operation is seeking to move its marketing position, for example from being a commodity supplier to a customised product supplier. Once a manufacturing enterprise has made a strategic decision about where they might need to be in the future, it needs to decide on a course of action to get there. A particular approach, which was recently developed, that can be used to search out and identify potential faults in the innovation process using a generic system approach is outlined and a case study using the approach is described.