Best Practices

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Based on years of experience in working with product development organizations of every type and size, ITI has established a series of proven Best Practices to fully address the key elements of new product development. When properly implemented these Best Practices lead to: Accelerated Time-to-Market and Increased Development Productivity.

ITI's New Product Development Best Practices include:

• All technologies must be proven prior to launch.
• All hardware for certification program must be identical. The only changes permitted are to fix certification problems.
• All product improvements must be scheduled for introduction at an agreed upgrade to block introduction point post certification.
• ALL requirements must be established prior to the start of detail design (i.e., technical and program).
• Do not use interim design configurations during certification program.
• All targets must be achieved during pre-detail design (i.e., weight, cost, performance, other).
• Pre-detail design activities must identify all partners and suppliers.
• The certification program must focus on validation and certification -- not development.
• Pre-detail design activities are the most important part of program to assure that the actual program runs smoothly.
• Program planning using critical path schedules is required.
• Minimize first prototype to test instrumentation and test requirements.

No matter if your strategy is market leadership, fast-follower, price leader, or to address specific improvement areas such as reliability/dependability, shorter development cycles, cost reduction, or the collaborative sharing of data --- ITI delivers results. A project-by-project implementation approach (Crawl, Walk, Run) ensures step-by-step improvement as knowledge and skills are transferred to clients encouraging the activity to grow into a sustainable program.

Upfront product planning, requirements capture, customer usage external load and duty cycle determinations, systems engineering simulation, target setting and target cascading, as well as analysis leads design and concept selection processes that assure new product success prior to the start of detail design, are key enabling processes and capabilities to achieve "Best Practice" new product development. Computer simulation capabilities, that describe all aspects of product behavior, are tailored to support concept alternative evaluations, trade-off studies and concept selection processes design decisions at each stage of new product development.

Likewise computer simulation capabilities must be validated. In most cases, current similar baseline vehicles, systems and subsystems are used to validate upfront system engineering simulations; prior to use for evaluations with regard to modified alternative concept development.

Flowdown of requirements, loads, duty cycles, alternative concept evaluations and concept selection processes, before start of detail design, are similar for most discrete products. A paradigm change in how new products are developed, validated, certified, introduced and supported in respective markets, together with the manufacturers and other vehicle customers, dealers and end users, is required to achieve Breakthrough Improvement business results (accelerated time-to-market and increased development productivity). Similarly dramatic time-to -market and development productivity improvements, that achieve superior "on time" new product introductions, are essential to keep pace with rapidly changing and demanding market requirements.

CPPD®

Concurrent Product / manufacturing Process Development (CPPD®) is the overall process of optimizing and integrating overlapping development phases and supporting tasks, governed by gated milestones, from product and project planning through concept, detail design, physical prototyping and production. Often, ITI consulting involves adaptation of CPPD® practices and processes into existing client product development processes.