ETRAGE’s New Product Introduction (NPI) encompasses all the activities within an organization to define, develop and launch a new or improved product. The NPI process is a highly structured and methodical approach that outlines a clear plan for launching new products into the marketplace. Its objectives are to increase product quality and customer satisfaction, while decreasing time to market, cost of production, and the risk of customer complaints, warranties, and recalls.
Project Initiation and Team Structure
An NPI project typically begins with a charter that specifies important high-level information, such as the project name, description, goal, budget, and project team—identified by their responsible roles and authorities (e.g., engineering, sales, marketing, quality, manufacturing).
NPI Process Structure and Templates
There are many different NPI process templates, often tailored by industry.
The NPI process can be fully templatized and broken down into a series of phases, with tasks within each phase that must be completed. These typically involve time-bound activities, sequenced into stages and phases that define all actions and process steps required to launch a new product. Multiple NPI templates can be selected, depending on whether a customer wants to do a fast-track process or the full NPI process. Regardless, the NPI templates themselves are fully customizable to your organization’s NPI standard.
Task Management and Dependencies
Some tasks may have dependencies on others, while others can be created without dependencies. Tasks can also be subdivided into smaller subtasks to improve status tracking or to assign them to multiple resources.
Within each task, notes and comments can be added to indicate its status, which can also be tracked by level of completion. Related documents necessary for the task can be attached or linked, and in a product development context, relevant CAD files or deliverables (such as 2D drawings or STP files) stored in PTC Windchill PLM can also be linked to the task to confirm completion.
Completion Validation and Phase Management
There is completion validation logic built in to ensure that phases cannot be marked complete until all tasks within the phase are completed, and likewise phases cannot be signed off on until the phase is marked complete.
Current Industry Challenges
Many companies currently rely on Microsoft Excel or Word templates emailed back and forth or, in some cases, paper documentation, forms, and files stored in network drives as the basis for their NPI process. This leads to a lot of potential issues due to wasted time as the data is siloed and stored in ways where there is no version control (particularly with Excel), no real-time visibility across NPI plan participants, difficulty tracking changes and approvals, no automated notifications or alerts, and particularly when these templates are shared over email or other messaging platforms, it can be a huge version control nightmare as to which version is the latest and most authoritative. Microsoft Excel cannot send automated notifications and reminders to project participants when NPI events happen.
Automated Notifications and Communication
Our NPI product can be configured to send automated or manual reminders or emails to notify project participants of due dates and can be timed to be sent upon certain events, for example at the start of a project, at the start of a particular phase or task, or once a phase or task is nearing completion or nearing its due date, or when tasks are several days past due and yet incomplete.
Centralized Reporting and Visibility
A centralized reporting dashboard aggregates all tasks across all NPI projects, providing instant visibility into whether a team is on track, identifying potential bottlenecks or delays, and enabling proactive management. This eliminates the need to open numerous Excel sheets to track progress.
Security and Access Control
The NPI product operates in a fully secure, role-based access control environment, ensuring that only authorized users within a project can view its contents and update its status. Additionally, all changes within tasks or phases are logged in an audit history that ensure all changes are documented appropriately, noting who made a particular change and at what time.
Process Continuity and Automated Management
As an example, when a manager heads out on vacation, work tasks can proceed smoothly because everyone that is participating in the NPI process has visibility to all tasks and phases, and what comes next. They receive automated reminders and alerts and notifications once a task is scheduled to start or coming due, and dependencies automatically manage the start and end of particular tasks that depend on each other. The system shepherds the process and eases the burden on Program Managers to ensure the NPI process stays on track.