Anaar Product Development Process (APDP)

The world we live in is changing faster than ever before. Consequently, our customers are getting exposed to these worldwide changes, which in turn are bringing about faster changes in their needs and expectations.

Since salaries are paid by satisfied customers, it is of paramount importance that the senior management of any organization focus their energies on creating and sustaining a constancy of purpose toward improvement of products and services to remain competitive. Long term focus on meeting and exceeding these changing needs and expectations of the customers is vital for the survival of any organization.

In order to get senior management to focus on these changing needs of the customers, many organizations have adopted a strategic goal of generating 20 to 30% of their annual revenues from products and services less than three years old.

The Anaar Product Development Process (APDP) consists of seven stages. At the end of each stage, there is a milestone and a gate. It is suggested that only when the criteria described for that milestone is met, the gate be opened for the development effort to proceed to the next stage. Otherwise, the gate should remain closed. Management needs to decide whether to cancel the development effort or to direct the development team to revisit this stage and successfully meet the criteria specified.

The shorter the time taken to market new product features the better it is for the organization. In this APDP methodology, a cross-functional team approach replaces the old concept of ‘handing over’ product development from one department to the next. The focus of the methodology is on optimizing the entire organization instead of the traditional departmental sub-optimization.

APDP utilizes some of the ideas of Ford’s ‘Concept to Customer’ and the Japanese ‘Quality Function Deployment (QFD)’ approaches.

The focus of this module is on development of new products and enhancement of existing products to ensure the satisfaction of the customers from the products and services delivered to them.