Patterns of communication among marketing, engineering and manufacturing—A comparison between two new product teams. Management Sci

Scientific evidence suggests that firms are more successful at new product development if there is greater communication among marketing, engineering, and manufacturing. This paper examines communication patterns for two matched product development teams (same manufacturer, same product development stage, similar functions and number of parts, reporting to the same divisional upper manager). The key difference between the groups is that one team used a traditional phase review process and the other used Quality Function Deployment (QFD), a product development process adopted widely at over 100 United States and Japanese firms including such large organizations as General Motors, Ford, IBM, and Procter & Gamble. The comparison is of scientific and managerial interest because QFD is often adopted to enhance cross-functional communication. To our knowledge, this is the first head-to-head comparison of traditional U.S. product development processes with QFD. We report data collected on communication levels within functions, between functions, within the teams, within the OEM group, between the OEM and supplie