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From the Back Cover
"McGrath has again crafted new ideas to drive product development."
William A. Kozy
President, BD Diagnostics
[BACK COVER]
[CATEGORY] Manufacturing
[HEAD] A Manager's Guide to Harnessing and Gaining Maximum Competitive Advantage from Today's Most Compelling Product Development Practices
A quarter century after MRP arrived to transform the global manufacturing arena, Next Generation Product Development written by PRTM cofounder and PACE® developer Michael McGrath promises to revolutionize new product development. Let its combination of real-world practice and cutting-edge insight show you how to consistently increase your organization's R&D productivity by 30 to 50 percent and transform you into an R&D leader.
Praise for Next Generation Product Development:
"I recommend that senior R&D managers, enterprise IT planners, chief information officers, chief technical officers, and chief operating officers read and discuss this book. It would help them improve corporate focus on how to achieve a more holistic 'real-time' environment for managing product strategy and product development."
Marc Halpern
Research Director, Product Life Cycle Management, Gartner Research
"Michael McGrath led a revolution in product development with PACE® in the 1990s. In Next Generation Product Development, he once again provides critical insights on an issue every CEO faces how to get more out of your R&D investment."
R. Ernest Waaser
President and CEO, Hill-Rom Company, Inc
"R&D efficiency is the challenge of the new millennium. It is a survival imperative. Early adopters of the management practices defined in Next Generation Product Development will build a significant and sustainable competitive advantage."
Tom Porter
Chief Technical Officer, Seagate Technology
"Once again, Michael McGrath and PRTM provide a roadmap for gaining competitive advantage through product development. The focus on productivity improvement is timely, as we struggle with the need for more new products and tighter development budgets."
Mark Stasell
VP and General Manager, International Truck and Engine Corporation
[FLAP COPY]
"The next generation of product development management is many times more complex than its predecessor...those who master it early will achieve competitive advantages that will not be easy to copy. It's one of those opportunities in business where great companies see an opportunity, master it before others, and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage."
From the Preface
Product development is a process that, like any other, is both manageable and improvable. Next Generation Product Development helps you stay at the forefront of the newest in product development innovation, as it introduces and examines the newest generation of practices in which the focus has changed from reducing time-to-market to managing and improving productivity. In other words, developing more new products than your competitors with a lower investment of valuable firm resources can be an avenue to drastically increasing your company's image and profits.
This straightforward, step-by-step guide instructive and invaluable for R&D executives and managers is also important for anyone looking to understand and utilize "new generation" product development management practices. Three key areas explored include:
-Resource Management Ideas for increased capacity utilization and utilization management lead to an outline for fully integrated resource management
-Project Management From enterprise project management to context-based knowledge management, techniques for bridging the gap between initial and final stages are offered
-Portfolio Management Methodologies are established for dynamic portfolio and pipeline management, comprehensive financial management of R&D, and integrated product strategy
Today's most successful and innovative product developers will harness the latest concepts, frameworks, and technologies, and place themselves at the forefront of the battle for competitive superiority. Next Generation Product Development explores today's most revolutionary processes, reveals how they are being enabled by constantly evolving new enterprise software, and promises to explode the possibilities of what you can accomplish in the exciting new generation of product development.
[author bio]
Michael McGrath is the cofounder of global management consultancy Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath (PRTM). McGrath is a world-renowned expert on product development and strategy. He led PRTM's development of the Product and Cycle-Time Excellence® (PACE®) methodology and is founder and chairman of Integrated Development Enterprise (IDe), a pioneer in enterprise software for product development. In demand around the globe as a keynote speaker, McGrath coauthored Setting the PACE in Product Development and Product Strategy for high-Technology Companies and has written a number of influential articles on international manufacturing, product development, and trends in the high-technology arena.
In the 1990s, time-based strategies changed the competitive balance in many industries as some competitors radically improved time to market through new management practices. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
The book is basically focussed on the description of what McGrath calls a "DCM" (development chain management) system, which would be the next-generation of product development management tools. While the content is very close to real problems in R&D, and the problems and solutions described feel very actual and real, the book as a whole leaves me very unsatisfied.
Why?
When McGrath proposes ways of addressing problems, he remains quite high-level on how this will look in practice or exactly how the "DCM" system would work in detail.
There is not a single real life example in the book. To show the possible application, a fictive company is used as an example. It got to the point of being embarassing when it is described how this fictive company made great improvements (in percentage with numbers) using this fictive DCM system.
The book really focusses on how some analytical numbers can be shared across stages of development and different teams. This is a necessary but incomplete base for "next generation" product development. Data and numbers can provide insight and guidance (and are undeniably a needed step), but the human dynamics should be as important. If you have some experience, you know e.g. that some resource allocations cannot be decided upon through spreadsheet analysis. People are not interchangeable Lego blocks.
While reading through this book, I continuously had the strong impression that I was reading a whitepaper or requirement document from a software company. As I often do, I run a quick background check on the author, and found that in before starting at i2, Mr. McGrath had co-founded IDe. IDe's business was to develop integrated solutions for Development Chain Management. (I couldn't find traces of this company's existence any more so I guess it doesn't exist any more). Was this book the blueprint for that company? Maybe, possibly.
Any case, I have spent 39,95 USD and have read through 360 pages and feel both of these are too high compared to the value I got out of the book in terms of practical use, innovative ideas and fun.
"Next Generation Product Development" by Michael E. McGrath
The last paragraph of Michael E. McGrath's newest book "Next Generation Product Development" boldly states that "product development has never been for the faint of heart." And I suspect that most everyone who has ever been involved in such activities will quickly shake their head "yes" to this "truth" statement, and quietly wish there was a better way. Fortunately in his new book McGrath guides us to this better way--a way that offers "more opportunity and promise for getting better new products to market faster, WHILE DOING MORE WITH LESS." The claim is nothing short of a renaissance of product development capability.
I like this book a lot. I like the multi-faceted emphasis on integration. I like the productivity theme and the need for new management processes. And I like the idea that we are only beginning the renaissance of product development capability, especially given the growth of collaborative development.
I confess that I do not like the continued use of the DCM abbreviation (it stands for "development chain management.)" But I suppose I can learn to live with another "alphabet name" because it does get to the heart of the matter--how to manage a lot of INTERDEPENDENT projects, all of which are going on at the same time. Of particular importance are McGrath's thoughts involving a "networked team," new concepts which I think will be fundamental to tomorrow's successful product development.
To join this renaissance, exactly where does one begin? McGrath offers three entry points: changes in resource management, changes in project management, or changes in strategy management. I suppose someone will try all three at once, but frankly just one is probably a lot for an organization to swallow. For different entry points McGrath offers us guidance, with levels of maturity assessments and/or stages of implementation. But even still, there is a lot of material to assimilate and multiple readings of many book sections will be needed to fully comprehend his recommendations.
However I suggest that you don't spend an excessive amount of time studying. Organizations mainly learn by doing, and this book lays out the "learn by doing" path toward success. Past generations of development have emphasized invention, project management, or time-to-market. This next generation is a path toward productivity within the entire development enterprise. It is a path toward "better decision making, better investment in R&D, better return on that investment, more collaboration with external partners, and true empowerment of development activity."
I suggest that you buy the book and begin.
Nils L. Dailey
N.L. Dailey Associates
It brought to my attention that MacGrath is actually running a software business in this area. Maybe it is the reason why he does not disclose any real business cases but using a hypothetical company - a major pit fall of this book. Inevitably he is hiding some of the real details which is preventing himself to convince the readers. Yet he want to sell his concept and you will have to find out the nitty-gritties maybe only by evaluating or purchasing his nice to have software products.
During the TTM Generation from 1992 to 2000, benchmarking studies determined that the R&D Effectiveness Index (the ratio of new product profit to R&D investment needed to create new products) doubled from 0.5 to about 1.0 across all industries. Over the next ten years, McGrath forecasts that the R&D EI will double again to 2.0 driven by the processes and systems of the R&D Productivity Generation. The message is clear. Companies that lead the way in implementing the R&D Productivity Generation will gain significant competitive advantage in the market place.
Through out the book, McGrath illustrates the new processes and systems using an example company, Commercial Robotics, Inc. CRI is a hypothetical company, but represents the kind of advances that are now being made at many different corporations. The example gives compelling evidence for the benefits that accrue to a company that systematically implements the new R&D Productivity Generation.
For all committed to product development excellence, from senior management to individual contributors, the Next Generation Product Development is a clear view into the future and what it will take to be world class in the decade ahead.
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