The empirical relationship between quality management and the speed of new product development

Quality management philosophy and tools have been widely used to improve and control product quality. However, there is a lack of literature on the relationship between quality management and new product development (NPD). People even worry whether quality management may hinder new product development. This paper reports a study that aims to investigate the influence of quality management on the speed of NPD. The research is based on the survey data from 700 manufacturing companies in 20 countries. The research reveals that TQM, teamwork, value analysis (VA) and quality function deployment (QFD) are all positively correlated with the speed of NPD, which means quality management philosophy and tools have a positive influence on the speed of NPD. This implies that companies which have implemented TQM and other quality tools will have a better basis for implementing new NPD approaches like concurrent engineering (CE) and design for manufacturing and assembly. This is especially encouraging for those OEM (original equipment manufacturing) firms that would like to change from OEM to ODM/OBM (original design manufacturing/original brand manufacturing). OEM companies normally implement TQM but very little in NPD.