Feinco

FHE, Inc. is a manufacturer of pumps and related fluid-handling equipment used primarily by the automobile, appliance, and construction industries. For a five year period sales and profits have risen due to aggressive new product introduction. However, aggressive new product introduction has resulted in bottlenecks in the engineering services department and a breakdown of communication and coordination among management and departments.

There are several steps Lum Donaldson needs to adopt to improve the new product development process at FHE, Inc. The first step involves company restructuring. At the present time a great deal of coordination is necessary to successfully introduce a new product. Product managers in marketing and technical program managers in engineering must successfully coordinate their activities. Phil Thomas, the vice president of corporate development and marketing, is currently responsible for both marketing and design engineering functions at FHE, Inc. There needs to be a restructuring so that one manager is responsible for each of these functions. So, too, Lum Donaldson needs promoted to Engineering and Quality Planning Manager, responsible for coordination and planning of technical program and product managers.

Another step that Donaldson needs to take has to do with resolving the problem of coordinating the relationship between product managers, technical program managers,

1. What steps should Donaldson take to improve the new-product development process at FHE?

The steps necessary the Donaldson should take to improve the new product development process at FHE is to shift from the traditional sequential “over-the-wall” process of the new product development to concurrent process.

The sequential process often results in product misalignment.

Sequential process is a traditional approach where processes are done in stages or steps shown in the figure below. Product misalignment occurs when problems occur during the new product...