The influence of quality management on new product development capability

By classifying quality management practices into infrastructure quality practices and core quality management and introducing the construct of new product development (NPD) capability, the present study provides a conceptual model to examine the co-alignment between quality management and design-manufacturing integration and their influences on NPD capability. The conceptual model is tested using data from 198 firms in China. The results show that infrastructure quality management practices can promote NPD capability significantly while the influence of core quality management practices on NPD capability is non-significant. Moreover, NPD capability has a positive influence on product innovation and process innovation, and it promotes firm performance directly. More importantly, the results show that design-manufacturing integration has a negative influence on NPD capability, which adds to and differs from extant conclusion that cross functional integration promotes NPD.