Available for Checkout – AC805 .G8721 2011
March 2011
Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to determine how the evolving new product development process can be improved at the Briggs & Stratton Corporation. Featuring multiple locations, Briggs & Stratton is the world’s largest producer of small air-cooled engines for lawn, garden, and other outdoor equipment. The company is also a major producer of home generators and pressure washers. The company consists of three major divisions. Each division functions as a silo, and largely because of the lengthy stability and success associated with several of Briggs & Stratton’s product offerings, each division relies on new product development processes that in some cases have been in place for years. Recognizing the fiercely competitive, volatile, and rapid nature of today’s new product development environment, Briggs & Stratton has been engaged in the reorganization of its divisions, with a focus on improving new product processes. This thesis employs both a review of the literature and a survey of suppliers to access the company’s current new product development processes, and to develop recommendations for improvement. The current new product development process is evolving, and features a mixture of new approaches (such as stage gate development) and legacy practices. Many current practices — such as the failure to embrace supplier participation, and the use of slow production processes — result in unnecessarily long new product development cycles. After an assessment of the company’s current practices, this thesis concludes that in order to remain competitive, the organization must continue to implement significant changes in its new product development process. This thesis recommends that Briggs & Stratton implement crowdsourcing practices as part of its new product development cycles in order to nurture a potential source of innovation. This thesis also recommends the implementation of an ontology-based knowledge management (KM) system in order to promote and to facilitate the organization-wide knowledge sharing that is necessary for the company to both accelerate and to improve its new product development cycles. Successful knowledge management systems are notoriously difficult to implement. An ontology-based system — with its ready-made descriptive taxonomies — can contribute to an easier KM transition in an organization.
