Product Development with TeamPort

Today's products are ever more complex while being developed by internal and external teams located across the globe. The challenge is to optimally organize, direct, and manage these teams, their interactions, and priorities during the design through manufacturing process. Shared situational awareness and sustainable, visual tools keeps their focus on real progress, coordination overhead, and product risk throughout.

Situation. Our client is a manufacturer seeking to drive cost and time out of its new product development cycle. The project was the design and manufacture of a consumer electronics product involving teams in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific. The typical design to manufacture interval was 4 years and needed to be reduced in order for the client to remain competitive. Complexity derived from the nature of the product and involves large, interdependent, globally distributed teams across the supply chain.

Response. GPD worked with the client to design the team structure, work structure, and product structure creating greater visibility of interdependencies and potential areas for improvement. The total project architecture was prototyped, focusing on the best design to accelerate the product development life cycle. GPD delivered TeamPort Software, methods, and training enabling the client to capture the project structure in a graphical format, clearly see interdependencies, project risks, and opportunities for improvement. GPD delivered the analysis using TeamPort Launch: A rapid project planning method to quickly deliver insight and benefit.

Impact. Team locations, functional roles and work structures were optimized to reduce the product development life cycle from 4 years to just 2 years.

Concurrency was added to the project only in areas where the concurrence yielded time-to-market benefit but did not adversely increase risk of failure.

GPD's TeamPort design tools are in place so that the customer can continue to design optimal project architecture and coordination. Each product development project, while based on the corporations standard work practices, can be fine-tuned for best performance.