Developing new products with knowledge management methods and process development management in a network

When managing the problem of new product development (NPD), a firm needs to cooperate with or compete with its strategic partners in a network to survive in the industry. This paper first discusses the critical success factors (CSF) of NPD in a network, and then simplifies 37 CSFs into 10 items within 3 groups by factor analysis and Delphi method. While analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is capable of dealing with the NPD managerial problems by generalizing subjective judgment of experts, it cannot deal with the inter-relationship among factors or the usually imprecise and vague human judgment. To compensate this deficiency, analytic network process (ANP) incorporated with sensitivity analysis, instead of the popular fuzzy AHP model, is proposed, and a firm can make a decisive evaluation by applying the model. However, developing new products with strategic partners in a network is positively associated with efficiency and effectiveness and negatively with innovation. In order to lead a firm to operate efficiently, effectively and innovatively, the product lifecycle management (PLM) including suitable knowledge management (KM) and process development management is advised for the execution of the selected NPD mix. Balanced scorecard (BSC) using ANP with sensitivity analysis is then suggested to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedure and models.