ABSTRACT
A company is nothing without its products or services. So, it is no exaggeration to say that
product development may be the most important process of any enterprise. Product
development is a set of activities that begin with a perceived opportunity and end with the
delivery of a finished product (Ulrich and Eppinger, 1995). A product, whether tangible
(a physical product) or intangible (a service), can be new to the market, new to the company,
new to technology, or a combination of these. It may derive from a radically new project or be
an improvement of previous versions. Moreover, together with shorter product life cycles,
rapidly changing market environments, increasing levels of competition, and a higher rate of
technical obsolescence, a steadily widening variety of products makes product development
crucial for competitive advantage of companies in all industries (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991;
Ward et al., 1995; Womack and Jones, 1996; Morgan and Liker, 2006). Moreover, data
consistently show that the majority of companies’ investment costs and up to 70 percent of
operating costs are determined during the product development process. This is also true for
product quality potential.
