Effectiveness of Systems Engineering Techniques on New Product Development: Results from Interview Research at Corning Incorporated

Abstract

In new product development (NPD) in the commercial (as opposed to military/aerospace) environment, many firms express confidence in the value of applying systems engineering (SE) techniques to the NPD process, even though there is little research to date that systematically evaluates the benefits of SE in the commercial setting. The goal of this paper is therefore to address this gap in the research by testing for SE impact across multiple projects, in this case within a single enterprise, namely Corning Incorporated. To achieve this goal, a joint team from the Systems Engineering Directorate at Corning Incorporated and the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell University conducted interview research to test for systems engineering (SE) effectiveness in product development in a commercial setting. The team conducted 19 interviews of systems engineers and project managers within Corning to evaluate the extent to which they used a range of systems engineering techniques, and the effectiveness of those techniques in improving project performance. The results from the interviews showed that for four selected areas of SE techniques (market, requirements, validation/verification, and trade studies), use of SE could be detected across projects that covered a broad range of Corning’s markets. Furthermore, an association was found between SE input and project performance. Of the 19 projects, 3 had superior project performance, and of these 2 out of 3 had “above average” scores in terms of the extent of SE use. At the other end of the spectrum, 2 out of 19 projects were judged to have “struggling” performance, and in both cases project difficulties were traced back to shortcomings in the use of SE that in turn resulted in low scores in one of the four SE areas. These findings support industry’s general intuition that early investment in the systems approach in NPD pays off in terms of better project outcomes. At the end of the paper, content analysis of quotes from interviews captures project managers’ perspectives on applying systems engineering, and the concluding discussion suggests ways the study of SE effectiveness might be extended to other enterprises.