Metrics for rating the “level” of new product development activity (for mass and batch produced products)

Companies, as well as government departments and other institutions, may want to measure the new product development (NPD) activity going on in companies. This is to help them judge the sufficiency of NPD in individual companies, or in geographical regions, or in complete countries and also the growth of NPD over a period of time, say 2-3 years. However, “NPD” can range from relatively simple routine work, (“low level”), to the highly complex, (“high level”). To recognise this, the authors have developed a simple rating scale of 1-5 for a metric of the “level” of NPD. This has been used successfully for a survey of new product development activity in the manufacturing companies in Singapore. The results are a set of metrics which will be used in Singapore to track the effectiveness of a government programme now in place with one of its objectives being to increase the amount and level of NPD in companies in Singapore. They believe others may want to adopt the same rating method and use it for making their own surveys. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the metric and make the case for its adoption by NPD practitioners, academics and other institutions