Discussion of the Results

The role of an internal customer (other divisions of the company) in addition to the external customers has been recognized especially in the total quality management literature (e.g. Juran and Gryna, 1993). While the product platform is not an end product by itself, the role of the derivative product developers, i.e. the internal customers (except in a case of horizontally sold platform), is even more significant. The internal customers differ from the external customers in a sense, that they might have greater influence to the strategic planning and product definition, and they have more insights to the progress of product development activities than the external ones. Additionally they might have access to the databases, personal contacts to the development personnel, and so on. The internal customer loyalty is also different from the external customer’s one. Even though the customer satisfaction is an antecedent to loyalty (Oliver, 1999), the satisfied external customers might not buy the product, if competitor’s product performs better (Gale and Wood, 1994). In the case of the internal customers, there might be full loyalty, and the satisfaction might be low – if there were no choices available.

The internal customers are in a good position to judge the issues concerning product platform development, and they can be expected to be critical in their comments: after all, they must be able to develop their own product on the platform, they will have to sell the platform as a part of their product to the end-customers, and ensure that the final product works. The platform development organization either helps the internal customers to succeed in their business or causes failure in meeting the business objectives. Hence, the chosen viewpoint to the research was the one of the product lines’.

From the product lines’ (i.e. the internal customers’) aspect, the research identified six product platform development factors: “Strategic and business fit of product platform”,

“Project communication and deliverables”, “Cooperation with product platform development”, “Innovativeness of product platform architecture and features”,

“Reliability and quality of product platform” and “Promised schedules and final product platform meeting the needs”. The found structure compresses the information found from the product platform literature and links together the pieces scattered around in the product platform literature. These results are interesting in a sense, that even though there exists literature on e.g. strategies (e.g. Allen and George, 1989, Scott, 2001, Wheelwright and Clark, 1992, McGrath, 1995, Tabrizi and Walleigh, 1997, Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997a, Sääksjärvi, 2002, Cusumano and Yoffie, 1998) as well as on communication (Nobeoka and Cusumano, 1995, Allen and George, 1989, Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995) both in the single product development and product platform development literature, the amount of empiric evidence on the contribution to product development and satisfaction is small.

The factor “Strategic and business fit of product platform” combines the decision-making and strategy aspects. Both the aspects have been covered to some extent by the previous product platform development literature (decision making: Robertson and Ulrich, 1998, Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997a, Meyer and Seliger, 1998, Nobeoka and Cusumano, 1995, strategies: Wheelwright and Clark, 1992, McGrath, 1995, Tabrizi and Walleigh, 1997, Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997a, Sääksjärvi, 2002, Cusumano and Yoffie, 1998) It can be questioned whether the role of strategic and business fit in product platform development is different from its role in the single product development. The amount of varying needs might highlight the importance of the fit in the case of product platform development, though. The varying preferences often lead to conflicts and to the game of power and politics, which highlights the importance of strategic decision making (Eisenhardt, 1999, Eisenhardt and Zbaracki, 1992) – the more there are varying needs the more delicacy and thought must be addressed to the strategic and business fit of the platform. The “Strategic and business fit of product platform” was found to be the strongest contributor to the product lines’ satisfaction with product platform development in this dissertation.

The factor “Project communication and deliverables” was highlighted in the analysis as a factor independent from co-operation. The communication during the development has been reported to cause problems or influence the success of projects both in the single product and product platform development literature (Scott, 2001, Nobeoka and Cusumano, 1995). Hence, the results of this dissertation support the existing literature on the communication’s role in the product platform development. Still, “Project communication and deliverables” was found to be a weak contributor to the product line’s satisfaction with the product platform development.

The importance of cooperation with customers in the new product development process is stressed in the latest literature (Sawhney, 2002, Rothwell, 1994), and this applies to cooperation with the internal customers, too. The product line involvement to the product development has been reported as being a ways to gain the internal customer satisfaction (and finally the external customer satisfaction) (e.g. Addey, 1999). Still, in this dissertation, the factor “Cooperation with product platform development” was not a significant contributor to the product lines’ satisfaction, except for one product line.

Innovativeness of product platform was not covered by the study of product platform literature, even though it has been reported to be a contributor to the success and failure of companies (e.g. Foster, 1986, Tushman and Anderson, 1986, Henderson and Clark, 1990, Utterback, 1996, Glasmeier, 1997, Tushman et al., 1997, Christensen, 2000). In this research, “Innovativeness of product platform architecture and features” was found to be one of the factors of product platform development from the product lines’ aspect;

hence, it brings new aspects to the research of product platform development. Still the product platform literature had noticed the role of clear architecture and interfaces in connection with product platforms (Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997a, Meyer et al., 1997b).

The factor was a weak contributor to the product lines’ satisfaction. An explanation might be found from the life cycle of the product platform. The innovativeness of product platform architecture and features might not be that evident in the case of developing new extensions and versions of the existing product platforms; the innovativeness at that stage of the product life cycle might be done with the business

end, i.e. the application part of the end-product. Hence, the innovations might be purely commercial ones at that state. On the other hand, innovativeness in the product platform renewal might be of more importance.

Reliability and quality of product platform was not covered at all by the study of product platform literature. Despite of the fact, that the product quality has not been studied in connection with the product platform literature, its importance has been recognized in both the quality management and product development literature (e.g.

Garvin 1984a, Garvin, 1984b, or Evans and Lindsay, 2002, Crosby, 1979, Juran, 1989, MacCormack et al., 2001). In this dissertation, one of the factors in product platform development was found to be “Reliability and quality of product platform”. The factor was found to be quite strong contributor to the product lines’ satisfaction, also.

The results of the analysis combined the promised schedules with the platform meeting the needs set to it (factor “Promised schedules and final product platform meeting the needs”). The combination is peculiar, but the product development literature has already earlier noticed, that project schedules have a great affect on the internal customers (in addition to the end customers) (Roberts, 1995b). There existing literature on both the single product and product platform development has also emphasized the importance of understanding and meeting the (internal) customer needs (Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997a, Meyer and Seliger, 1998, Tabrizi and Walleigh, 1997, Soin, 1993, Välimaa et al., 1994, Cooper, 2000, Evans and Lindsay, 2002, Kärkkäinen, 2002, Davis, 1994). The factor was a strong contributor to the product lines’ satisfaction in this dissertation, and hence strengthened the results of previous research.

Unfortunately, the quantitative analysis could not assess two aspect found in the review of product platform literature: the efficiency and effectiveness of platform (strategic metrics) (McGrath, 1995, Tabrizi and Walleigh, 1997), and competences (McGrath, 1995, Tabrizi and Walleigh, 1997). The questionnaire included one statement slightly connected with the efficiency of product platform development, i.e. the easiness of building applications on the product platform. The question was excluded from the

factor analysis, since it did not meet the requirements set to it by the model. The questions related to the competences, on the other hand, were discarded from the questionnaire because either they did not fulfill the requirements of normality or they did not meet the requirements set to it by the model. Hence, the research did not bring any evidence on how the product lines would see the product platform efficiency and effectiveness or the competences.

Even though there are several important factors of product platform development, in a case of building a new product platform development organization, the stress should be on the utmost important issues first. The analysis also revealed the factors, which had the greatest affect on the overall satisfaction level of the product lines: hence, “Strategic and business fit of product platform”, “Reliability and quality of product platform” and

“Promised schedules and final product platform meeting the needs”.

The findings made about the case specifically (reported in chapter 6) were interesting, and along with the case description, could be of help in understanding the dynamics of the product platform development. Still, they cannot be generalized to other product platform units, and hence, they must be treated with cautiousness.

To conclude, the research produced new and interesting results about the product platform development, which could be used in the following research as well as in practice. Since the results cannot be generalized to concern all the organizations developing product platforms, this research calls for continuation and is not complete without other research following and complementing it.