New product development resource forecasting

Hird, Abigail and Mendibil, Kepa and Duffy, Alexander and Whitfield, Robert Ian (2015) New product development resource forecasting. R&D Management. ISSN 0033-6807

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Abstract

Forecasting resource requirements for new product development (NPD) projects is essential for both strategic and tactical planning. Sophisticated, elegant planning tools to present data and inform decision-making do exist. However, in NPD, such tools run on unreliable, estimation-based resource information derived through undefined processes. This paper establishes that existing methods do not provide transparent, consistent, timely or accurate resource planning information, highlighting the need for a new approach to resource forecasting, specifically in the field of NPD. The gap between the practical issues and available methods highlights the possibility of developing a novel design of experiments approach to create resource forecasting models.