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Article

Open Access

Comparative Study on FFE Activities Between Japanese and Korean NPD Project Success

Author(s)

Ruslan Mammetseyidov, Akio Nagahira

Full-Text PDF Download XML 1656 Views

DOI:10.17265/2328-2185/2015.0910.003

Affiliation(s)

Ruslan Mammetseyidov, Ph.D. candidate, Management Science and Technology Department, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
Akio nagahira, Ph.D., professor, Management Science and Technology Department, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

ABSTRACT

This study shows the impact of fuzzy front end (FFE) phase during innovation process on new product development (NPD) project success in two East Asian countries—Korea and Japan was explored via employing comparative study. Authors decided to consider two East Asian countries’ successful periods as comparison samples for the study of this issue. The 1980s are considered to be “golden age” of Japanese manufacturing firms when they were extremely successful on global market. Korean firms are enjoying competitive advantage in the late 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s. A conceptual model was developed based on previous research. The model was tested using data from 293 Korean manufacturing firms in the late 2000s and from 540 Japanese manufacturing firms in the late 1980s using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. In both countries, the effect of intensity of planning on efficiency, prior to the development, was high. Moreover, effect of market uncertainties on effectiveness was significant. Therefore, effective initial planning and good analysis of market prior to the development have positive impacts on NPD project success. In the late 80s, in the period of stability of the economy in the world, the Japanese firms were successful concentrating more on FFE activities, such as market and technological research and initial planning. However, in the 2000s when the world economy started to change so fast and the demands for the goods change so fast, the Korean firms became more successful, thanks to flexibility in the system of NPD project strategies where system was not fixed to the initial plans but where the changes within the project execution phase were allowed. Thus Korean and Japanese firms had different strategies in NPD process in the two different periods. Japanese firms were concentrated more on FFE activities and tended to keep initial plans during development process, while the Korean firms were more flexible in project execution phase allowing dramatic changes to the initial plans.

KEYWORDS

new product development (NPD), fuzzy front end (FFE), structural equation modeling (SEM), smart PLS, project execution phase

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