Lean Six Sigma Approach to New Product Development

In this rapidly moving electronics market, fast to market with new products is what separates top performing companies from average companies. A survey conducted by Arthur D. Little revealed that "New-Product Development (NPD) productivity in atop performing company is five times what it is in the average company. The top performer gets five times as much new product output for the same investment." What do they know that the rest of us do not? One winning factor is the use of the Robert Cooper process. (...)

This paper will present a Lean Six Sigma approach to "right sizing" the Stage Gate process to be efficient, practical, and easy to manage. Various tools of Stage Gate, along with proven best practice, will be covered. In addition, a reduced Stage Gate model will be discussed for simple, low risk projects....