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by:
Patricia Wilson, CITEC Marketing Manager
Manufacturers
have new challenges beyond production operations and efficiency
improvements. Customers are demanding more; competitors are now
global; and technology is moving at "Internet speed".
For
your business to grow, you need either to look at new markets
or new products. If your focus is on new products, then how do
you develop ideas into successfully marketed products?
The
process a company uses to develop new products is often chaotic
and costly and usually takes longer than it needs to. The key
to successful new product launches is to systematize your approach
and reduce the time it takes to get new products to market.
A
highly regarded process which helps you do this is referred to
as the "stage-gate" approach. Used for decades by such
leading firms as Hewlett Packard, Procter & Gamble, DuPont
and American Express, the "stage-gate" approach has
now been refined to apply to small and medium sized enterprises.
By
implementing a Stage-Gate™ process you equip your product
development team with a road map of stages and necessary activities.
Each stage facilitates decision-making through predetermined
deliverables, and allows you to better manage business risk by
incrementally increasing your resource commitments as those deliverables
are met.
Ultimately,
the use of a Stage-Gate™ process at your company will allow
you to increase speed to market with fewer mistakes and less
rework by using a successfully proven, systematic model adopted
by hundreds of U.S. companies.
CITEC
utilizes the Stage-Gate™ process model developed by the
Product Development Institute (PDI) known as ATOM-SME™.
This model is designed according to industry best practices to
benefit small and medium sized enterprises.
ATOM-SME™ is
a complete package that includes templates for project deliverables
and evaluations. And, probably more importantly, it allows companies
to get the process up and running quickly -- because it's been
done before by companies all over the world.
To
find out how ATOM-SME™ can improve your business through
new product development, contact CITEC at 315-268-3778, or check
out our ATOM-SME™ page.
PW
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