Management of the Product Development Process in the Brazilian Autoparts Industry: Current Practices and Main Problems

This paper presents the results of a survey on the practices, problems, performance and trends in the product development process (PDP) management of the Brazilian autoparts industry. Last decade, this industry underwent a broad process of restructuring following the deregulation of Brazilian economy. In general, there is: a wide dissemination of PDP reference models, but they are partly implemented; application of methods and tools to problem solving, but they are poor integrated; use of development teams to carried out the tasks; integration with automakers; and, there is a lack of PDP performance measurement.