6. SUMMARY
6.3 Discussion and success of the research
The research was conducted within the project team and was modified as the project advanced which might cause lack of validity. There is room for human error, and the decisions made during the project might have been affected by the project schedule and surrounding circumstances. The theory basis, especially PDD, for this thesis was inter-preted to provide tools and processes for the project. Misunderstandings are possible when implementing larger theory foundations, but considering the results, significant er-rors seem improbable.
The results provided in this thesis were targeted to a specific new development project.
However, the PDD tool and the process description will be used in future NPD projects in the target company as well. The descriptions might be relevant to any other manufac-turing firm, that is investigating their concept processes. It is highly unlikely that the pro-cesses could be retrofitted but using them as a basis for a similar approach is possible.
The ideas and elements of this thesis have been researched quite thoroughly by different authors. There might be some novelty value in this specific combination of elements.
Product architecture has a well-established theory background but combining it with aes-thetical design might result in new discoveries in the field of product development. Over-all, the PDD approach might not be that well known in traditional product development as it is quite a new framework. The more PDD is researched and implemented into pro-cesses, it might lead to more companies getting interested in the basic idea of Property-Driven Development.
With the described NPD process the transition from product requirements to actual prod-uct concept is logical and will be quite intuitive to use in future NPD projects. Taken into consideration the elements further to be developed, accuracy and relevancy of the pro-cess will develop. A well-defined foundation for a new product development project was laid. The targeted problems were resolved, and all the developed frameworks were im-plemented into the actual NPD process. However, each process should be optimized for the target company. In the next new product development project, decisions and imple-mentations made in this thesis should be challenged to further discover what are the key elements in the concept phase.
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