An overlapping process model to assess schedule risk for new product development

Faster time-to-market for new products is important for hi-tech corporations to gain premium pricing and higher sales volume. An activity overlapping strategy is a frequently used technique in practice for quicker product launch. However, complex interaction patterns between components and activities increase the chance of unanticipated iterations that may lead to late time-to-market. This paper presents an overlapping process model to analyze the impact of process structure on the lead-time of a complex development project. Information evolution and change sensitivity, which are two major factors for activity overlapping, are considered in the proposed model and a simulation algorithm is developed to analyze the impacts of process structure on the development lead-time. The example of a battle tank simulator project is used to illustrate the proposed approach. The computational experiment shows that the proposed approach allows project managers to design a better process structure to minimize the risk of being late-to-market. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.