A method for assessing the impact of product development on the company

Because of competitiveness, the problem of product and production system developments is becoming increasingly current. From the point of view of products and production systems, companies must have tools to redesign, analyse, choose and manage their developments. After analysing which tools and methods exist in the scientific literature, we present in this paper a general method for assessing the impact of product development on the company. This method can be applied for each criterion that the company wants to analyse (delay, cost, organization, resources, quality, etc); we choose here the delay criterion. The method features four steps. The first step aims to characterize the case study by representing it with generic parameters. The second step offers the construction of a matrix model (called a static model) in order to categorize the product developments. The third step proposes the construction of a Temporized Coloured Petri Net model (called a dynamic model) and the fourth step simulates this model in order to obtain the expected result: the assessment of impact of the product development. At the end of the paper, we propose a case study on a roller tapered bearing manufacturer-- the Timken company.