New Product Introduction projects (NPI), got to love them right? If you’ve worked in or around Supply Chain then chances are you will (or have) come across the introduction of new products and witnessed first hand the effect it can have on the supply chain.
Such projects are usually complex and fraught. However, there are lessons that can be learned and fed back into the project management system to improve things next time.
Here is our list of top 10 failures within NPI. Hopefully, you’ll both get a chuckle and a few lessons learned from our list.
1/ Manufacturing issues are not fed back to Engineering team to improve/fix design definition
2/ Pricing pressure. Supplier under-estimates what products will actually cost and tries to re-negotiate mid-project.
3/ Schedule fails to account for complexity, supplier fails and gets the blame.
4/ The right metrics to measure performance aren’t used! (or worse still none at all)
5/ NPI is seen as execution only and not managed as a cross-functional project.
6/ Supplier is new and onboarding hasn’t been executed correctly and supplier is unable to interface correctly with the purchasing organization and unaware of all its obligations.
7/ Specialist tooling required for product launch is found inadequate during production
8/ Lead time estimates prove incorrect
9/ Project team lack experience of NPI
10/ Make/Buy planning, in hindsight, proves incorrect
So, that’s our top 10 list. Have you worked NPI? Any lessons you want to share, we’d love to hear them, use our comments section below to spill the beans!