5 August 2008

Aberdeen Group has produced five industry reports based on the findings of benchmark research entitled Profitable Design Chains: Global Product Design Comes of Age, which identifies three key best-in-class themes for global product development initiatives – protecting product intellectual property, designing in parallel, and coordinating global design teams. To further this research, Aberdeen looked at the global design strategies of five vertical industries (aerospace & defence, automotive, consumer packaged goods, high tech & electronics and machinery industries) and examined what these themes mean to each industry.

“Our research indicates that companies are viewing global design more strategically,” said Michelle Boucher, research analyst in the product innovation and engineering practice, Aberdeen Group. “However, to realise the full potential of their global design strategies, manufacturers should re-assess their progress in implementing these strategies to adopt best-in-class practices so they can remain competitive in their respective marketplaces.”

Leif Pedersen, vice president at Siemens PLM Software, commented: “The Aberdeen findings truly present an opportunity for manufacturers to re-focus their efforts on implementing new global design initiatives or improving upon the ones they have in place. Manufacturers and companies across all industries are constantly faced with the challenges of cost pressures and market demand for rapid product development. As they look to maintain their competitiveness, they must embrace innovation and global design as a way to help them stay ahead of the pack.”

The Aberdeen report findings summarised:
Aerospace & Defence
The report finds that while A&D manufacturers have begun to change how they think about global design, they are behind other industry averages across all key performance indicators. Furthermore, A&D manufacturers face the greatest consequences of losing product intellectual property given the complex nature of the components and subsystems involved. A&D manufacturers are behind the industry average in terms of implementing capabilities that would help to protect IP – 44 percent compared with 69 percent respectively. As A&D manufacturers look to capitalise on the growing global workforce, it will be even more important for them to implement secure global design strategies that address this challenge and help better control who has access to the data as well as the amount of time that access is available.
Read the full report.

Automotive
With more and more automotive companies finding it hard to turn a profit, the report finds that lowering costs is the top concern. In keeping with this focus, meeting revenue targets is the area in which automotive manufacturers lagged behind the most compared to the industry average – 55 percent compared to 67 percent. As automotive manufacturers address the challenge of lowering costs, they are taking advantage of different labour costs around the globe. Furthermore, automotive manufacturers are beginning to leverage a global workforce to not only reduce the cost of product development but to gain more insight into unfamiliar markets.
Read the full report.

Consumer Packaged Goods
In a challenging retail marketplace, consumer package goods companies are constantly faced with the challenge of getting products to market faster while making sure costs are kept at a minimum. Working across multiple disciplines (R&D, marketing, packaging, sourcing, regulatory and manufacturing, among others), CPG manufacturers must successfully coordinate with these teams to ensure the successful launch of products within short time windows. Overall, CPG manufacturers indicate performance that is consistently at or below multi-industry average levels. While they are behind in meeting cost targets, they remain ahead of the industry average in meeting launch dates. In order to take full advantage of their global design networks and to remain competitive within the retail marketplace, CPG manufacturers must continually look to global design initiatives to help them get products to market faster in a cost-effective manner.
Read the full report.

High Tech & Electronics
One of the biggest challenges that HT&E manufacturers face is getting products to market faster before technology becomes obsolete. Despite this recognition, the report finds that HT&E manufacturers are only slightly ahead of the industry average when it comes to meeting target launch dates. The majority of respondents report that they have had global design initiatives in place for over a year (71) percent. High tech manufacturers will need to capitalise on the opportunity for further improvement by leveraging these design chains to effectively accelerate the design process.
Read the full report.

Machinery
Global design is a newer trend for Industrial equipment manufacturers as only one-third of respondents to the study reported that their initiatives were less than a year old. Industrial equipment manufacturers fall behind the industry average across all metrics with a gap seen in the ability to meet product revenue targets (56 percent compared to 67 percent) and development cost targets (52 percent compared to 67 percent). Moving forward, industrial equipment manufacturers will need to learn from the experiences of other manufacturing industries with more mature global design processes in place.
Read the full report.

Methodology
Aberdeen Group examined the global design strategies of more than 170 enterprises. To gain an understanding of how manufacturers can best take advantage of global design chains, respondents were benchmarked according to their performance across five key performance indicators and divided among three performance categories: best-in-class (top 20 percent of performers); laggard organisations (bottom 30 percent) and the industry average (the remaining 50 percent). These measures included the percent of products meeting targets for revenue, product cost, product launch, quality, and overall product development costs.