Impediments to Timely Delivery of New Products at an Industrial Products Firm

Identifies and discusses sources of delay in the new product development process at an industrial products firm. Data were collected during 11 bi‐weekly project review meetings at which 42 different projects were discussed. The highest priority projects were designs for a new venture into European markets. The study suggests that manager selection, vendor monitoring, attention to physical engineering design,and bureaucratic checkpoints contribute more to project delays than do most other internal problems such as resource bottlenecks and miscommunications.