Launching Products Towards the Right Target

Abstract

The textile and apparel industries are under constant pressure to develop and introduce new products; product development is a cornerstone in the survival strategy of any company in these industries. Yet, the development cycles are lengthy and usually require several feedback loops, often showing a mismatch of product properties, cost, and requirements.

Other assembly-oriented industries have successfully used managerial tools to integrate the product development process with marketing, product costing, and procurement functions. This paper discusses the use of product development tools (e.g. quality–function–deployment matrix) and target costing as an integrated approach for the textile and apparel industries. With the help of a case study it is shown how this integrated approach can reduce product development cycle time by focusing technical research, and how to incorporate desirable features in the new product design to gain customer satisfaction.

The integrated approach facilitates the development of new products that are competitively priced and earn projected profits in a target market niche.

Keywords:

• Target costing
• product development
• QDF matrix
• recycling