Essay on Operations Management
This essay investigates the literature available on procedures that would enable integration of standardization and simplification in product development. In particular, it elucidates how these procedures contribute to product development and establishes the role of purchase and supply management in facilitating these procedures. Further, it examines how cross-functional terms would benefit the development of new products. The innovativeness that comes with introducing new products into the market determines the future success of any businesses.
In light of this, it has become a custom for marketers charged with the responsibility of product decisions to lay down a set of procedures to ensure effectiveness. For instance, the initial step often involves generation of ideas that are to be evaluated in determining the product options. This implies that the company must get contributions both from within it and from its customers by encouraging consumer comments. Conversely, a company may assign a group of technocrats to discuss a range of ideas and agree on those that can be further pursued in developing the new product. It is at this point that the selected ideas will be properly scrutinized by company personnel in order to pick only the attractive ones (Krajewski & Ritzman 2005, p.
123). With the right ideas at hand, the company marketers will then seek feedback from customers as a way of developing and testing the concept. In most cases, the marketers would identify a target group that would be convened and the selected ideas presented to them in the simplest way possible in order to enable a quick feedback. At this point, the company marketers would have to analyze the viability of the product based on the feedback obtained from the target group. Essentially, a product idea that goes beyond this stage would be good enough to be introduced in the market. As such, with a little market testing the product will be ready for a launch into the market and eventually commercialized.
Ideally, these procedures provide a guideline that would ensure that goods introduced into the market do not only conform to quality standards of the market, but that they achieve the required threshold of customer acceptance (Krajewski & Ritzman 2005, p.34). In conclusion, product development requires a clear procedure to be followed to enhance customer acceptance of the product once it is launched in the market. This means that purchase and supply management must put proper strategies to obtain relevant information from the market. Besides, the cross functional team must be able to synthesize the information and come up with a working formula for product development.
