Orig­i­nal source pub­li­ca­tion: Fer­nan­des, I. X., F. de Sá-Soares and A. Tereso (2022). Mod­el­ling and Ana­lyz­ing Prod­uct Devel­op­ment Processes in the Tex­tile and Cloth­ing Indus­try. Pro­ceed­ings of the Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence Inno­va­tion in Engi­neer­ing—ICIE 2022, Guimarães (Por­tu­gal).
The final pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able here.

Mod­el­ling and Analysing Prod­uct Devel­op­ment Processes in the Tex­tile and Cloth­ing Indus­try

Inês Xavier Fer­nan­des,^a Fil­ipe de Sá-Soares^b and Anabela Tereso^c

^a Mas­ter’s in Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­sity of Minho, Cam­pus de Azurém, Guimarães, Por­tu­gal
^b Cen­tre ALGO­RITMI, Depart­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, Uni­ver­sity of Minho, Cam­pus de Azurém, Guimarães, Por­tu­gal
^c Cen­tre ALGO­RITMI, Depart­ment of Pro­duc­tion and Sys­tems, Uni­ver­sity of Minho, Cam­pus de Azurém, Guimarães, Por­tu­gal

1. Introduction

Headed to expor­ta­tion, the Tex­tile and Cloth­ing Indus­try (TCI) remains as one of the most impor­tant Por­tuguese indus­trial sec­tors [CITEVE 2012]. After a period of decline, boosted by the global eco­nomic cri­sis, the sec­tor has been recov­er­ing, cur­rently rep­re­sent­ing 10% of total national exports and 8% of vol­ume of busi­ness with 19% of the employ­a­bil­ity of the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try [ATP 2019]. This is an indus­trial sec­tor char­ac­ter­ized by a high com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion, design and qual­ity, in order to face a global and increas­ingly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket [Car­doso and Quel­has 2018]. The fash­ion retail sec­tor is char­ac­ter­ized by very short life cycles, insta­bil­ity in con­sumer pref­er­ences and a high het­ero­gene­ity of sup­ply, lead­ing to increased com­pet­i­tive­ness in the mar­ket. There­fore, this sec­tor presents a volatile and risky mar­ket, with prod­uct life cycles planned to be short, in order to cap­ture con­sumer inter­est [Dapi­ran 1992]. Fash­ion apparel pro­duc­ers face the need to per­ma­nently deliver new prod­ucts to ful­fil the orders requested by retail­ers, boosted by con­sumer mar­ket trends. Due to the reduced life cycle of these prod­ucts, their devel­op­ment must be fast and effi­cient, in order to develop a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in the mar­ket. Char­ac­ter­ized by the need for agility, the process of devel­op­ing new prod­ucts in the fash­ion cloth­ing sec­tor requires the adop­tion of prac­tices that enhance effi­ciency. To pur­sue that excel­lence, the process of cloth­ing devel­op­ment needs to be care­fully under­stood and diag­nosed, in order to find out oppor­tu­ni­ties for its improve­ment.

We argue that Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment is a valu­able tool for the mod­el­ling the Prod­uct Devel­op­ment Process (PDP) in the sec­tor, assist­ing in the under­stand­ing of how the devel­op­ment of new prod­ucts in the TCI is processed, and pro­vid­ing a basis for the pro­jec­tion of new mea­sures that enhance its effi­ciency.

sThis paper is struc­tured as fol­lows: Sec­tion 2 presents the lit­er­a­ture review, address­ing rel­e­vant top­ics, namely Prod­uct Devel­op­ment and Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment; Sec­tion 3 describes the research method­ol­ogy fol­lowed; Sec­tion 4 explores the results of the study; finally, Sec­tion 5 con­cludes the paper, under­lin­ing some lim­i­ta­tions and pre­sent­ing rel­e­vant future research.

2. Literature review

2.1 Product Development

The ref­er­ence to a new prod­uct hap­pens when a prod­uct or con­cept is totally new to the mar­ket, or totally new to the com­pany, despite the exis­tence of sim­i­lar prod­ucts on the mar­ket [Pan­war and Bapat 2007]. In an increas­ingly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket, the devel­op­ment of new or improved prod­ucts and ser­vices is cru­cial for the sur­vival and pros­per­ity of orga­ni­za­tions [Kahn et al. 2013]. Prod­uct devel­op­ment is increas­ingly con­sid­ered a crit­i­cal busi­ness process for the com­pet­i­tive­ness of com­pa­nies, espe­cially with the grow­ing inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the mar­ket, increas­ing diver­sity and vari­ety and reduc­ing the life cycle of prod­ucts [Rosen­feld et al. 2006].

The design of a prod­uct is the process that takes place at the begin­ning of its life cycle, which includes moments of research, exper­i­men­tal devel­op­ment, and mar­ket­ing [OECD and EURO­STAT 2005]. There­fore, it con­sists in the sequence of steps or activ­i­ties that an orga­ni­za­tion takes to con­ceive, design and mar­ket the prod­uct [Ulrich and Eppinger 2016], in order to con­vert needs into tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial solu­tions [Smith and Mor­row 1999]. Prod­uct devel­op­ment activ­i­ties start with the per­cep­tion of a mar­ket oppor­tu­nity and end with the pro­duc­tion, sale, and dis­tri­bu­tion of a prod­uct. The pre­cise and detailed def­i­n­i­tion of a PDP is use­ful and impor­tant because it [Ulrich and Eppinger 2016]:

• Ensures higher qual­ity of the process;

• Stim­u­lates coor­di­na­tion between the ele­ments involved in the process;

• Keeps the process plan­ning updated;

• Allows man­ag­ing process per­for­mance; and

• Pro­motes con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion’s PDP.

Product development in clothing and fast-fashion

The PDP is a diver­gent process, which varies depend­ing on the con­text of the orga­ni­za­tion. Since this work is based on the TCI, and more specif­i­cally on the pro­duc­tion of cloth­ing for the fast-fash­ion mar­ket, it is impor­tant to know the char­ac­ter­is­tics of this mar­ket in order to under­stand its spe­cific needs and the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of its prod­uct devel­op­ment process.

In the last 20 years, the tex­tile and cloth­ing indus­try has evolved sig­nif­i­cantly. Mass pro­duc­tion began to dis­ap­pear and prod­ucts with a shorter life cycle appeared and the num­ber of col­lec­tions increased, forc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers to change their sup­ply chain in order to be able to pro­duce at a lower cost and with greater flex­i­bil­ity, qual­ity and speed to mar­ket [Bhard­waj and Fairhurst 2010]. In part, this explains the insta­ble nature of the cloth­ing indus­try, due to the sea­son­al­ity and sub­jec­tiv­ity of the fac­tors that lead to the pur­chase of prod­ucts. Thus, to keep up with the com­plex­ity of the fash­ion apparel prod­uct, man­u­fac­tur­ers need to under­stand and adopt the most effi­cient meth­ods, in order to cre­ate and pro­duce dif­fer­en­ti­ated mod­els in the short­est pos­si­ble time [Parker-Strak et al. 2020]. The fast-fash­ion con­cept emerged to fol­low the trend of chang­ing the par­a­digm of this sec­tor, rep­re­sent­ing a mar­ket that is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict, with a high buy­ing impulse, shorter life cycles and high volatil­ity in demand [Bhard­waj and Fairhurst 2010]. This con­cept means that orga­ni­za­tions must be able to react to new fash­ion trends in peri­ods as short as 15 days to 1 month, in order to allow them to remain com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket [Tran et al. 2011], unlike the tra­di­tional cycles, in which two annual col­lec­tions were pre­sented accord­ing to the sea­sons, increas­ing the num­ber of cycles per year from 2 to approx­i­mately 50 [WRI 2021]. Given these char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mar­ket, the prod­uct devel­op­ment process has to respond accord­ingly. Senanayake [Senanayake 2015] iden­ti­fies the main dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of the fast-fash­ion cloth­ing PDP as being:

• Pull strat­egy, given that the prod­ucts devel­oped will be prod­ucts based on what the mar­ket is look­ing for and ask­ing for at the moment, instead of push pro­duc­tion in which the man­u­fac­turer intro­duces prod­ucts to the mar­ket based on his­tory.

• Design and devel­op­ment of small pro­duc­tions of mul­ti­ple styles in short cycles, in order to respond to the mar­ket, pro­vid­ing a vari­ety of options in smaller quan­ti­ties to increase pur­chase moti­va­tion and increase sales.

• Speed in design approval, in order to ful­fil an effi­cient val­i­da­tion process and reduce the wait­ing time until deliv­ery to the cus­tomer.

• Pre­fab­ri­cated raw mate­r­ial, to guar­an­tee a flex­i­ble flow of mate­r­ial for the devel­op­ment of the part.

• Close rela­tion­ship between the ele­ments of the sup­ply chain, since they will be ele­ments that will work closely to develop the prod­uct and it is nec­es­sary that they are inte­grated and aligned, so that quickly, and in col­lab­o­ra­tion, they can respond to the dynam­ics of the mar­ket.

• Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary in the devel­op­ment teams, since it is a process that goes through sev­eral stages, inter­ven­ing in dif­fer­ent areas of action, and thus will require the inte­gra­tion of sev­eral ele­ments, with expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent themes.

Thus, the PDP in the tex­tile and cloth­ing sec­tor, par­tic­u­larly with pro­duc­tion for fast-fash­ion, will have to fol­low the com­plex­ity of the prod­uct, cre­at­ing and pro­duc­ing dif­fer­en­ti­ated mod­els, in a short period of time, while fol­low­ing the trends of the fash­ion mar­ket [Moretti and Bragh­ini Junior 2017].

2.2 Business Process Management

Orig­i­nat­ing from the Latin pro­ces­sus, process rep­re­sents a set of inter­re­lated activ­i­ties and tasks, which are ini­ti­ated in response to an event, and which aim to achieve a spe­cific result for the process con­sumer [von Ros­ing et al. 2014]. A busi­ness process is dis­tin­guished from other processes since, as its name implies, it is a process applied in a busi­ness. Hence, a busi­ness process is defined as a set of activ­i­ties, log­i­cal and sequen­tial, that allow the trans­for­ma­tion of inputs into out­puts, in order to deliver value to the cus­tomer [Har­ring­ton et al. 1997]. Busi­ness processes are coor­di­nated activ­i­ties that cre­ate a final prod­uct or ser­vice, with inputs and out­puts, as well as a defined begin­ning and end [von Ros­ing et al. 2014].

In a busi­ness, it is pos­si­ble to clas­sify its processes in three dif­fer­ent ways [ABPMP 2013]: pri­mary processes (essen­tial processes of the orga­ni­za­tion, respon­si­ble for adding value to the cus­tomer); sup­port processes (sup­port the orga­ni­za­tion’s pri­mary processes); and man­age­ment processes (with the objec­tive of mea­sur­ing, analysing, mon­i­tor­ing, and coor­di­nat­ing all processes of an orga­ni­za­tion). Each one with its objec­tive, all the processes of the orga­ni­za­tion are nec­es­sary for its proper func­tion­ing, and there­fore its man­age­ment is nec­es­sary, and hence the need for Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment (BPM). Despite the dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions of BPM, it is pos­si­ble to rec­on­cile them as the dis­ci­pline that involves any com­bi­na­tion of mod­el­ling, automa­tion, exe­cu­tion, con­trol, mea­sure­ment, and opti­miza­tion of an orga­ni­za­tion’s process flow [von Ros­ing et al. 2014]. As a result, there is a set of meth­ods, tech­niques and tools for the design, inter­ac­tion, con­trol, and oper­a­tional analy­sis of busi­ness processes, involv­ing peo­ple, orga­ni­za­tions, appli­ca­tions, doc­u­ments, and other sources of infor­ma­tion.

To rep­re­sent busi­ness processes, visual tools are com­monly used which con­sist of dia­grams rep­re­sent­ing the process, namely, Busi­ness Process Model and Nota­tion (BPMN), that allows to illus­trate, doc­u­ment, and shape the way an orga­ni­za­tion devel­ops its busi­ness across all its lev­els, i.e. at the strate­gic, tac­ti­cal and oper­a­tional level [von Ros­ing et al. 2014].

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

BPMN was intro­duced in 2004 as a stan­dard lan­guage for busi­ness process mod­el­ling. It is a visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion that serves to model and rep­re­sent the oper­a­tional flows of an orga­ni­za­tion [vom Brocke and Rose­mann 2014]. This tool has the main objec­tive of pro­vid­ing a nota­tion that is under­stand­able by any user of the process, being sim­ple to use and allow­ing to cre­ate flow dia­grams that are inde­pen­dent of the type of busi­ness they rep­re­sent [OMG 2013].

The BPMN lan­guage is grouped into four major cat­e­gories of ele­ments [vom Brocke and Rose­mann 2014]:

Flow objects

These ele­ments allow to build the busi­ness processes, and include the activ­i­ties (squares), events (cir­cles) and gate­ways (rhom­bus), as shown in Fig­ure 1 [Cia­ramella et al. 2009]:

Fig­ure 1: Flow Objects at BPMN

• Activ­i­ties—Work units to be car­ried out dur­ing the busi­ness process. Among the activ­i­ties we can have processes, sub­processes and tasks. An activ­ity is a dis­crete action with a well-defined begin­ning and end, that is, a func­tion that is per­formed con­tin­u­ously is not an activ­ity in the BPMN con­text. Among tasks, one may find sev­eral types, depend­ing on their pur­pose, and they can be dis­tin­guished by the use of icons in the upper left cor­ner of the activ­ity ele­ment.

• Events—Some­thing that occurs in the process and how the process responds to this event (in the case of being a “receive” event), or how the process gen­er­ates the sig­nal that some­thing has hap­pened (in the case of being a “send” event). Events may be ini­tial, inter­me­di­ate, or final.

• Gate­ways—Deci­sions in a process, being used to demon­strate the con­ver­gence or diver­gence of the flow of con­trol between activ­i­ties, events, among oth­ers. They are graph­i­cally rep­re­sented by a rhom­bus and again, depend­ing on their type, take dif­fer­ent graph­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

Con­nec­tion objects

Ele­ments used to con­nect the flow objects and rep­re­sent the rela­tion­ships between them. There are three types of con­nec­tion objects, depend­ing on their func­tion [OMG 2013] (Table 1).

Table 1: Types of Con­nec­tion Objects

Swim­lanes

Ele­ments used to denote a par­tic­i­pant in a process and group all the activ­i­ties car­ried out by that same par­tic­i­pant. Sub­di­vid­ing the pool into lanes allows the activ­i­ties to be orga­nized and cat­e­go­rized by each entity that per­forms them (Fig­ure 2). The con­cepts pool and lane, serve exactly, as their names indi­cate, to repli­cate the oper­a­tion of a pool, in which each swim­mer stays in his lane, just like each process con­tained in its ele­ment.

Fig­ure 2: Pool and Lanes in BPMN

Arte­facts

Ele­ments with the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing com­ple­men­tary infor­ma­tion about the rep­re­sented process. They can be data objects, groups or anno­ta­tions and each one has a spe­cific pur­pose, as illus­trated in Table 2.

Table 2: Types of Arte­facts in BPMN

3. Research Methodology

In order to under­stand the PDP in TCI, this paper reports the appli­ca­tion of a case study research strat­egy. This strat­egy con­sists of an empir­i­cal method that inves­ti­gates in depth a topic or phe­nom­e­non of inter­est, within its real-life con­text [Yin 2018]. Thus, the case study aims to explain, describe and explore a spe­cific case in the con­text in which it occurs, thus reveal­ing the mul­ti­fac­eted nature of the sub­ject of inter­est [Crowe et al. 2011]. In case study research, the word ‘case’ refers to the units of analy­sis such as peo­ple, groups, orga­ni­za­tions, change processes, among oth­ers [Saun­ders et al. 2008].

In this con­text, the case study strat­egy was applied in a group of com­pa­nies that stands out in the TCI sec­tor as one of the largest Por­tuguese tex­tile groups. This group is one of the few com­plete ver­ti­cal units world­wide, con­trol­ling its pro­duc­tion from spin­ning to con­fec­tion, and fol­low­ing the entire trans­for­ma­tion process of the raw mate­r­ial, from the cot­ton wool to the fin­ished gar­ment. It is one of the largest sup­pli­ers of the Indi­tex Group world­wide, and there­fore its pro­duc­tion needs to fit the require­ments of the fast-fash­ion mar­ket, with speed and agility being the watch­words in its oper­a­tion.

To sup­port the find­ings in this case study, the tech­nique of par­tic­i­pant obser­va­tion was employed. Par­tic­i­pant obser­va­tion is based on col­lect­ing data from the point of view of user and researcher active in the work. This tech­nique made it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor the processes of key users. To enhance the rel­e­vance of the data col­lected, users were selected, tak­ing into account their role in the processes under study. This selec­tion was made together with the com­pany’s pro­duc­tion direc­tor, based on her exten­sive knowl­edge of the process.

4. Results

4.1 Resources

To carry out the PDP, the com­pany makes use of var­i­ous resources, namely human and mate­r­ial. In terms of human resources, the PDP relies on its employ­ees and exter­nal resources. Regard­ing inter­nal employ­ees, Table 3 pro­vides a sum­mary of the rela­tion­ship between their func­tions and quan­ti­ties.

Table 3: Human Resources involved in the PDP

The process is orga­nized into teams, with each team being assigned to depart­ments accord­ing to the cus­tomers with whom the group works. Each team has at least one sales­per­son, one fash­ion designer, one graphic designer and one mod­eller. Even­tu­ally, when there is a depart­ment with a greater flow of work, there may be a rein­force­ment of employ­ees in the func­tions described. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the sales teams, there are ele­ments that are trans­ver­sal, col­lab­o­rat­ing with all the devel­op­ment teams, namely the
R&D team–respon­si­ble for search­ing and cre­at­ing new knit and woven fab­rics, in order to pro­duce the bases for the devel­op­ment of new pieces (new com­po­si­tions, weights, mix­tures, among oth­ers); the sourc­ing team–respon­si­ble for sourc­ing raw mate­ri­als when they do not exist inter­nally, be it knitwear, fab­rics or acces­sories; the oper­a­tors of the sam­ples ware­house, both for fab­ric and knitwear–respon­si­ble for orga­niz­ing the mate­ri­als and prepar­ing the quan­ti­ties requested by the devel­op­ers; and the seam­stresses of the sam­ples pro­duc­tion–respon­si­ble for mak­ing the sam­ples.

In what con­cerns mate­r­ial resources involved in the process, the raw mate­r­ial for gar­ment man­u­fac­ture and the oper­a­tional resources that will sup­port the employ­ees involved in the process must be addressed. In rela­tion to raw mate­ri­als, the gen­eral com­po­nents han­dled in the PDP are knitwear, fab­rics, and acces­sories. The oper­a­tional resources to make the gar­ments, such as sewing machines, will also be used, as well as com­put­ers run­ning cre­ative devel­op­ment soft­ware.

Regard­ing the peri­od­ic­ity of the process, it is char­ac­ter­ized by its vari­abil­ity, fol­low­ing the volatil­ity of the mar­ket in which it is inserted. Thus, it is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict or esti­mate the time inter­val in which a new devel­op­ment will be nec­es­sary. The process was mon­i­tored over the time. Devel­op­ment requests were for­mal­ized in the form of col­lec­tions of 15 to 30 mod­els, with an inter­val of approx­i­mately 15 to 20 days. Accord­ing to the employ­ees involved, this is an ade­quate esti­mate of their peri­od­ic­ity, but it should not be taken as sta­tion­ary, given its intrin­sic insta­bil­ity.

4.2 General Process

Main­tain­ing its core busi­ness in the gar­ment trade, the cre­ative devel­op­ment of new designs and prod­ucts is essen­tial for the com­pany pro­duc­tion activ­ity, and con­se­quently, its sur­viv­abil­ity. This process con­sists of a pre­lim­i­nary stage to pro­duc­tion, in which the cre­ative devel­op­ment teams, together with the sales teams and all other stake­hold­ers, cre­ate and nego­ti­ate the piece with the cus­tomer, in order to result in a pur­chase and there­fore start the group’s pro­duc­tion process. Through­out this process, the design of the gar­ment, its pat­terns, its tex­tile mate­r­ial, its acces­sories, and the details of its man­u­fac­ture will be defined, accord­ing to the cus­tomer’s wishes, fol­low­ing a cycli­cal process until final approval, as shown in Fig­ure 3.

Fig­ure 3: Gen­eral Overview of PDP

Given the com­plex­ity of the PDP, it was impor­tant to cat­e­go­rize the activ­i­ties in three sub processes Prod­uct Devel­op­ment and Cre­ation Process, Busi­ness Process and Raw Mate­r­ial Search and Sup­ply Process. As men­tioned, the process begins with a con­tact with the cus­tomer and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of their needs. Given that con­tact, the cre­ative devel­op­ment process is trig­gered–Devel­op­ment and Cre­ation Process, namely design and mod­el­ling; as well as the search for mate­ri­als to com­pose the piece–Raw Mate­r­ial Search and Sup­ply Process. This process cul­mi­nates in the con­fec­tion of the sam­ple, which will be sent to the cus­tomer. The next step depends on the cus­tomer’s deci­sion: to make changes to the gar­ment (and thus start a new devel­op­ment cycle); to buy the gar­ment (and start the pro­duc­tion process) or to give up the devel­op­ment (and ter­mi­nate the process). Each of these processes were mod­elled using BPMN, high­light­ing the dynam­ics between the dif­fer­ent par­tic­i­pants in the process.

Development and Creation Process

This is the most cre­ative part of the process, which relies on the sup­port of var­i­ous col­lab­o­ra­tors who aim to cre­ate the con­cept of the gar­ment and explore their cre­ative abil­i­ties to do so. It involves fash­ion design­ers, graphic design­ers, mod­ellers, and con­fec­tion. Fig­ure 4 depicts the process at a gen­eral level.

Fig­ure 4: BPMN—Devel­op­ment and Cre­ation Process

Business Process

Regard­ing the busi­ness process, its main focus is the role of the sales­per­son. It is through him that cus­tomer’s wishes are dis­cussed and worked on, until the devel­oped item is pur­chased. Fig­ure 5 dis­plays the BPMN struc­ture of this activ­ity.

Fig­ure 5: BPMN—Busi­ness Process

Raw Material Search and Supply Process

Finally, it becomes essen­tial to address the Raw Mate­r­ial Search and Sup­ply Process (Fig­ure 6) where the activ­i­ties required to sup­ply the com­po­nents nec­es­sary for the part are rep­re­sented, with a high­light to the users of sam­ple ware­houses, as well as to the sourc­ing and the R&D depart­ment.

Fig­ure 6: BPMN—Raw Mate­r­ial Search and Sup­ply Process

4.3 Discussion

In this sec­tion, we iden­tify and dis­cuss the main lessons learned from the devel­op­ment of this work, which aimed at under­stand­ing the work­ing envi­ron­ment in the PDP, in order to iden­tify its key processes, diag­nose its main prob­lems, and find out oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment.

The PDP analysed in the case of study is weakly for­mal­ized and con­trolled, being in an embry­onic state regard­ing its matu­rity in effi­ciency. There­after, there is a need for action in order to spot pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment. Indeed, the mon­i­tor­ing of the agents of the DPD and the map­ping of their roles and activ­i­ties, made pos­si­ble the assim­i­la­tion of cru­cial prob­lems whose mit­i­ga­tion was required. Among these prob­lems, the dis­per­sion of infor­ma­tion in the process, the infor­mal work­ing method and pro­ce­dure, and the lack of vis­i­bil­ity of the process stand out. These char­ac­ter­is­tics can be observed through the BPMN dia­grams where, for exam­ple, the var­i­ous doc­u­ments that cir­cu­late in the process are rep­re­sented, show­ing the depen­dence on paper and the pos­si­bil­ity of mis­in­ter­preted infor­ma­tion, as well as the dif­fi­culty of shar­ing infor­ma­tion between dif­fer­ent con­trib­u­tors to the process, rep­re­sented by the dia­gram’s lanes.

With regard to the dis­per­sion of infor­ma­tion, this is due to the exis­tence of mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, often even in the employ­ees’ per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to main­tain a com­mu­ni­ca­tions his­tory and to record infor­ma­tion. Addi­tion­ally, the use of paper, as a method of trans­mit­ting infor­ma­tion, increases the dis­per­sion of infor­ma­tion and the trans­mis­sion of incor­rect infor­ma­tion due to mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The infor­mal work­ing method, with no stan­dard work­ing pro­ce­dures, is also a crit­i­cal prob­lem in the process. This prob­lem is ver­i­fied, for exam­ple, in the inex­is­tence of task man­age­ment processes and the lack of process con­trol points. Finally, the lack of vis­i­bil­ity of the process sta­tus is also a major prob­lem in PDP. Both from the per­spec­tive of vis­i­bil­ity of the state of a devel­op­ment, and from the per­spec­tive of vis­i­bil­ity of all the devel­op­ments occur­ring at the moment and his­tor­i­cally. As for the sta­tus of a devel­op­ment, the lack of vis­i­bil­ity leads to a con­stant need to query other users to under­stand at what stage the devel­op­ment is, inter­rupt­ing their work and con­se­quently decreas­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity. Addi­tion­ally, the lack of vis­i­bil­ity of all the work is wor­ry­ing in two ways: the first being the lack of under­stand­ing of all the work being devel­oped at the moment, pre­vent­ing the man­age­ment of pri­or­i­ties; and the sec­ond being the lack of a record of all the work already devel­oped, hin­der­ing data analy­sis and con­se­quently the man­age­ment and per­for­mance con­trol of the process.

The PDP was per­formed with­out stan­dard­iza­tion, lead­ing to dis­perse work­ing meth­ods. How­ever, the need and the ben­e­fits of intro­duc­ing new prac­tices in PDP were rec­og­nized by employ­ees and man­age­ment. Regard­ing the life cycle of a PDP, the process scru­ti­nized in this study was lim­ited to the actual prod­uct devel­op­ment, exclud­ing any pre-devel­op­ment and post-devel­op­ment phases, cor­re­spond­ing respec­tively to the ini­ti­a­tion/plan­ning, and clos­ing of the process, there­fore dis­re­gard­ing the poten­tial ben­e­fits of each of those phases.

5. Conclusion

The pur­pose of this work was to diag­nose and analyse PDP prac­tices in the TCI, mod­el­ling the PDP of the case of study, in order to iden­tify improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and pro­vide con­text to adopt prac­tices that improve its func­tion­ing. The par­tic­i­pant obser­va­tion of the employ­ees’ rou­tines, with the objec­tive of map­ping the PDP, enabled a closer look of those involved in the process, which facil­i­tated the under­stand­ing and doc­u­men­ta­tion of their prac­tices and con­cerns.

As known, case stud­ies intend to pro­vide insight in a spe­cific case, so it has its lim­i­ta­tions since the find­ings of this paper may not cor­re­spond to the real­ity of PDP processes in all CTI and there­fore this point should be empha­sized. Accord­ingly, the next step would be to per­form the same study in other man­u­fac­tur­ers, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to assess com­par­a­tive lines between the var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions and be able to cre­ate a man­age­ment model adapted to the sec­tor where they oper­ate, and then cre­ate com­mon met­rics and per­for­mance indi­ca­tors that allow the per­for­mance of the process to be crit­i­cally eval­u­ated.

At this case study, prod­uct devel­op­ment took place with­out method and stan­dard­iza­tion. Accord­ing to what was mapped through­out this work, it is noted the divi­sion of new prod­uct devel­op­ment into three macro processes: the Devel­op­ment and Cre­ation Process (where the graphic and fash­ion design­ers develop their work), the Busi­ness Process (mainly explored by the sales­peo­ple with the help of admin­is­tra­tive tech­ni­cians) and the Raw Mate­r­ial Search and Sup­ply Process (car­ried out by all inter­nal and exter­nal raw mate­r­ial sup­pli­ers). These processes are car­ried out, in gen­eral, in a man­ual way and with depen­dence on paper, with no stan­dard­ized processes through­out its devel­op­ment.

This work con­trib­utes to the adop­tion of prac­tices that enhance the effi­ciency of the PDP in the TCI, increas­ing the knowl­edge about its activ­i­ties, so that improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties might be iden­ti­fied and seized upon.

Acknowledgement

This work has been sup­ported by FCT—Fun­dação para a Ciên­cia e Tec­nolo­gia within the R&D Units Pro­ject Scope: UIDB/00319/2020.

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