Private label new product development process improvement in the UK fast moving consumer goods industry

Abstract

This paper contributes to the limited but growing body of literature on the topic of new product development performance within the world-class UK fast moving consumer goods industry. It reports the findings of the second phase of an applied research project called that involved Asda and six of its leading private-label suppliers. Based upon questionnaire responses that characterise the performance of 283 new product lines developed over a twenty-month period, this paper details the baseline operational (technical) and commercial performance of the standard Asda product development process called Bullseye. This data includes its innovation profile, success profile, value adding profile and time-based performance (cycle time and lead time). The paper highlights a number of relationships within this data that contravene some of the key findings in the existing literature. It also provides insight into the resulting interventions necessary to both the Bullseye process itself and its supporting performance measurement system in order to achieve significant performance improvement.