Automotive Product Development
Description
At present, my primary research focus is studying product development in the auto industry. I am working with Stefan Thomke (HBS) and Takahiro Fujimoto (University of Tokyo) on the 4th Round of the Global Automotive Development Study. The first round of this research led to the landmark book, Product Development Performance (Clark & Fujimoto, 1991). Later rounds have led to the seminal paper on "Front-Loading" Problem Solving (Thomke & Fujimoto, 2000) and the widely-read book, Experimentation Matters (Thomke, 2003).
I am most interested in the advanced engineering phase of auto development where innovative technological features are refined and integrated into vehicle programs at automakers. In particular, I am studying how collaborative innovation is managed both within an automaker (i.e., between different functions and groups) and between an automaker and its suppliers. Collaboration in the advanced engineering phase seems to be particularly tricky for a variety of reasons, such as, vague goals, long-time horizons, necessity of much trial and error, and delicate power relations between players (i.e., players jockeying to take the leadership position).A key line of inquiry of this research is to benchmark the organizational patterns employed at automakers and their suppliers to develop new features and incorporate them into new vehicles. The research aims to uncover best practices to help automakers speed up, lower the cost, and decrease the level of organizational stress surrounding advanced engineering activities, which should ultimately lead to vehicles with higher product integrity that deliver greater customer satisfaction. Academically, the research aims to build grounded theory in the field of innovation and technology management.
For this research on advanced engineering in the auto industry in addition to the Harvard auto study described above, over the past two years, an international research team led by Takahiro Fujimoto (University of Tokyo), Christophe Midler (Ecole Polytechnique), and John Paul MacDuffie (Wharton School) has developed through case studies at three automakers (two in Europe, one in Japan) a questionnaire and structured interview-based approach to gather quantitative and qualitative data on resource costs, organizational processes, and performance indicators for innovative features and the vehicles in which they are incorporated. We are presently in the process of field testing the questionnaire as we collect additional case-study data.