Use of Managing Techniques in the development of products in the automotive industry: consequences on quality, cost and time parameters

International competition, fragmentation of markets with increasingly demanding consumers and novel technologies have strongly contributed to a turbulent and highly competitive scenario of the automobile sector. The characteristics of the market have brought the development of products into the spotlight in this competitive “game”. Companies have started valuing and demanding more of the development of novel products with the aim to obtain high productivity, high quality short term projects.

The current work aims to identify the contribution of some management techniques and engineering tools to the improvement of the product development process performance parameters. The main objectives include: (1) to identify the main management techniques and engineering tools that the diesel engine sectors of the auto industry present in their product development sector, (2) evaluate the degree at which these methods and techniques are being introduced and (3) identify how the people in charge of the product development sectors sense the contributions of the techniques and tools introduced in order to improve the performance parameters (time, quality and cost).