16th International Research/Expert Conference

”Trends in the Development of Machinery and Associated Technology”

TMT 2012, Dubai, UAE, 10-12 September 2012

EXPERIENCES IN AGILE R&D PROJECT MANAGEMENT

FOR NEW PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Rodulfo M. Rodríguez Gutiérrez Joaquim Minguella Canela

Felip Fenollosa Artés Tomeu Ventayol Femenías
Fundació Privada Centre CIM
Llorens i Artigas 12, Barcelona
Spain

María Antonia de los Santos López

Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria Industrial de Barcelona
Avda. Diagonal 647, Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT
In the past 20 years technology has advanced at incredible speed. Product life cycle has decreased
tremendously. Innovation in product and process has become essential for companies’ survival.
Products are not longer simple, they integrate different and new technologies and therefore
manufacturing process is evolving towards intelligent, virtual, sustainable and high performance
factories. In spite of all these changes in manufacturing, R&D project management has not evolved at
the same pace. The authors have approached a new way of conducting R&D projects that can
integrate IT Agile Project Management and Innovation Management best practices. As a result the
present paperformulates a methodology for agile new product and process development that can
match the actual product cycle development requirements, shortening project life cycles but keeping
space for innovation and creativity.
The methodology has been applied in R&D projects for the automotive industry to develop new
automated manufacturing cells for production lines. The experience allowed to identify the key
processes with more risk during the project execution and helped us to gather information to keep
improving the methodology.
Keywords: R&D, Project Management, Agile, Automotive

1. INTRODUCTION
Innovation is a word widely used in the industry nowadays. Companies have realized that innovation
is necessary if they want to stay competitive in global market in where they play today [1, 2, 4, 5]. For
the purposes of this paper we will define innovation in the manufacture industry as the creation of
products or services that are successful in the market trough technological development [2].
How do companies achieve innovation and thus new product and services that differentiate them with
the competence? Several systematic approaches have been developed for Innovation Management
within companies [4], but all of them involve project management to bring ideas to successful product,
processes or services. Good project management is essential if good ideas are to be implemented in
business. Artto et al. [5] also states that Project Management Offices (PMOs) have a key role in the
management of innovation projects. Once the creative part have defined the ideas to be implemented,
a good project management is essential for the innovating process.

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The importance of project management is even more critical when innovation projects are carried
within small and medium enterprises (SMEs), because of the scarcity of its resources. SMEs are vital
for both developed and developing economies [6], so if they do not innovate and create new product
and services, the economy of the countries will not grow. Many SMEs that want to start innovation
projects face the lack of financial and personal resources. This a common experience in Catalonia
where companies and research centers strive to develop new products with very limited budgets.

Fundació CIM recognize the importance of improving the methodologies used to manage R&D
projects. Previous efforts were made at Fundació CIM taking advantage of rapid prototyping
technologies in order to decrease product development project durations and thus its costs [7]. Besides
rapid prototyping technologies Fundació CIM has been innovating in processes analyzing and
adapting IT project management best practice into product development methodologies.

2. THE METHODOLOGY
There is a wide variety of project management methodologies and a lot of literature exists about the
subject [8, 9, 10, 11], especially on the last 20 years where the project life cycle of product
development has been dramatically reduced and had became a critical success factor among
competitors. Barba [8] mentions G. W. Connell and G. Stalk that recognize time as a competitive
advantage factor and a strategic weapon as important as quality or innovation.

IT Project management methodologies have advanced in the used of informatics management,

forecasting and budgeting tools, definition of requirements, design tools, testing, measurement, control
and risk management. Last generation IT methodologies have evolved into agile and rapid ways of
obtaining results [10, 11]. The agile methodologies claim to ensure that the final product is developed
with a high probability of success, even in a constantly changing environment [10]. Fundació CIM
started a project to develop a new R&D project methodology where all the latest improvements of
mechanical and IT disciplines were included and so new product and process could be developed in
less time, consumed less resources keeping high quality standards and also leaving room for creativity
and innovation.

The methodology developed at Fundació CIM is mix of some of the previous design methodologies
used, the classical project management theory and some of the best practices observed in the IT
Industry including the new agile methodologies like SCRUM [10]. The key factors selected from IT
methodologies studied were accurate project definition, role clarification and assignment, project
planning and control using informatics collaborative tools, managing requirements and product
specifications, product backlog, development sprint backlog, early unit, integration and system testing,
versioning, systematic release and deploy management. From the previous design methodologies
computer aided design, collaboration tools [12] and rapid prototyping technologies were included.

2.1. Roles
An important part of the methodology is to have clear defined roles and responsibilities for the project
team. The roles included in the methodology are:
• Project Manager; is the final responsible of the planning, execution, monitoring, control and
closing of the project.
• Product Manager; is in charge of the final product in the organization, he develops the strategy
according to the market, develops relationships with clients, unites all the departments that
deal with the product and develops documentation relevant to the product.
• Designer Team; is responsible of creating new products conceptualizing and evaluating ideas.
• Developer Team; are in charge of bring the product to life. The team is expert in the
technologies necessaries to build the product.
• Testing Team; is in charge of the development and execution of the testing plan. The team is
the final responsible that the product fulfills all the designed elements.
• Release Manager; is in charge that the product is delivered in the right way. Coordinates the
documentation, installation or distribution.

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2.2. Stages
The methodology includes the following stages
• Definition; in this stage the project definition document is created. It is a statement that
includes the problem detected, the goals, the objectives, the scope, the team members, the
success factors, the risks, the planning and the budget of the project. In this stage the product
and project manager with support of the leaders of the other teams delineate the project. The
risk management part is a key task in this stage since R&D projects normally involve high
risks and it is better that the clients and the project team are aware of them.
• Design; in this stage is divided in three parts. An analysis task is performed to create the
Functional Specification document where all the desired requirements for the project are
explained in the best way possible including images, diagrams or whatever needed. A
conceptual design is made with the aid of all the virtual design informatics tools, no matter if
the product is mechanical, software, hardware design or a combination of them all. Any
physical prototype is encouraged so all rapid prototype technologies and quick developments
are very useful in this stage. The final phase of the stage is the detailed design, and is where
all the details for the design are specified and all the characteristics of the final product are
detailed.
• Development; in this stage the list of requirements defined in the design phase is used to
create a Product Backlog, a concept defined in the SCRUM methodology, which is simply a
list of all the things needed to be done to bring the product to life. Then small batches of work,
called sprints [11] are organized to develop, build and assemble what is necessary to fulfill the
functionalities desired. These tasks include integration of different modules of the product and
the validation of the integration.
• Testing; this stage is divided in two phases, a test plan is written in the Test Specification
document and then the test plan for the functionality is executed. If the objectives of test plan
are not met, then a loop is started with the design and development teams to start a new design
and development cycle.
• Deployment; in this stage the deployment manager does whatever is necessary to deliver the
product to the client or clients. Is when the user manual and the product documentation is
done. It is started as soon as design phase has ended but it can be adapted to the changes
applied to the design during development and testing phases. Transportation, distribution,
formation or installations are also managed in this stage. Finally a Closing Project documents
and a Post Analysis documents are done to evaluate and learn from the project development.

Figure 1. Simplified block diagram of the methodology

3. EXPERIENCES IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

After defining the methodology Fundació CIM applied it in a project with a company from the
automotive industry that needed to develop a new product involving a mechanical, pneumatic and
software systems. The complexity and the nature of the project was a perfect opportunity to prove the
methodology.

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Is worth mentioning that the risk management exercise made in the definition stage helped the project
team manage the problems predicted when they actually happened. The functional specification
definition was the stage where more struggle occurred because designers where used to work more on
physical and mechanical specifications and less with logic or functionality ones. The development
phase was more fluid and the sprints and the help of rapid prototyping technologies helped the quick
feedback shortening the redesign cycles. The testing phase was other phase that had good result since
the tests plans where defined since the design stage, their execution was done in a more automated
way. Finally the release stage helped to control all the aspects of the delivery and installation of the
project leaving room only for small problems without big consequences. The biggest issues during the
project execution came when working with external providers that were not in the same dynamic as
the project team and occasionally increased the predicted times.

The experiences have brought good results with the development of manufacturing cells that are now
part of an assembly plant producing electronic auto parts. The project was executed in time and budget
that were beneficial for the client as for the project team.

4. CONCLUSIONS
After having applied the methodology in a few projects we want to make a few adjustments for a
second version with all the lessons learned. In the projects that we could apply the methodology we
could reduce the total project execution time but the biggest benefits have been observed in the
redesign cycles saving both time and money. This improvement has been achieved thanks to the time
dedicated in the design phase and the functional specifications and the sprints made during the
development phase where the team could quickly test the usability of the functions as recommended
by the agile methodology.

5. REFERENCES
[1] Becheikh, N., Landry, R. & Amara N. (2006). Lessons from innovation empirical studies in the manufacturing
sector: A systematic review of the literature from 1993-2003. Technovation, 26(5-6), 644-664.
[2] Kusiak, A. (2007). Innovation: The Living Laboratory Perspective. Computer-Aided Design &
Applications, 4(6), 863-876.
[3] Papinniemi, J. (1999). Creating a model of process innovation for reengineering of business and
manufacturing. Production Economics, 60-62, 95-101.
[4] Schewe, G. (1994). Successful innovation management: An integrative perspective. Engineering and
Technology Management, 11(1), 25-53.
[5] Artto, K., Kulvik, L., Poskela, J. & Turkulanien V. (2011). The integrative role of the project management
office in the front end of innovation. Project Management. 29(4), 408-421.
[6] Radas, S. & Božić, L. (2009). The antecedents of SME innovativeness in an emerging transition economy.
Technovation, 29 (6-7), 438-450.
[7] Gomà, J. & Minguella, J. (2008). Development of a methodology for the materialization of ceramic rapid
prototypes based on substractive methods. 12th International Research/Expert Conference. Istambul . Turkey
[8] Barba, E. (2005). Innovación de productos mediante ingenieria concurrente. Gestión 2000. Barcelona, Spain.
[9] Ulrich, K. & Eppinger, S. (2000). Product Design and Development. McGraw Hill.
[10] Vlaanderen, K., Jansen, S., Brinkkemper, S. & Jaspers, E. (2011). The agile requirements refinery:
Applying SCRUM principles to software product management. Information and Software Technology.
53(1), 58-70.
[11] Abrahamsson, P., Juhana W., Siponen, M. & Ronkainen, J. (2003). International Conference on Software
Engineering. Portland. USA.
[12] Lee J. & Jeong, Y. (2012) User-centric knowledge representations based on ontology for AEC design
collaboration. Computer Aided Design. 44(8), 735-748.

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