Vol. 5 Num. 3 - GCG: Revista de Globalización, Competitividad y ...

Product innovation: An empirical study into the impact of simultaneous engineering on new product quality94 and early involvement. To carry out this study, a questionnaire was designed and sent to126 Spanish companies with innovative products, manufacturing electronic materials, radio,television and communications equipment (Spanish National Classification of EconomicActivities: CNAE-32). A linear regression analysis was run on the 43 valid questionnairesreturned which allowed us to evaluate the hypothesis, with the degree of improvement asthe control variable.The results of the regressions appear to indicate that, on the one hand, early involvement isthe basic principle of simultaneous engineering which has no effect on new product quality,and on the other hand that the use of multifunctional teams has the greatest effect on thisvariable representing the success of a new product.Such teams consist of people from different functional areas, including customers andsuppliers, who cooperate in executing the tasks of the team. They have the support of toplevel management, a leader who is fully dedicated to the project from start to finish, andwill stimulate communications and informal relations. This helps to reach agreement whentaking decisions regarding the project, which in turn allows an earlier identification of problemsand their solutions, given that all technical, commercial, manufacturing aspects, etc.,are considered from the beginning of the project. Furthermore, taking the customers intoaccount when shaping the development team helps the product not only to meet but alsoexceed their expectations, thus ensuring a high level of quality for the product.Simultaneous engineering brings together all members of a project through a system ofinformation and knowledge interchange, and establishes simple and effective mechanismsto coordinate activities. The early identification of problems and solutions make engineeringchanges necessary which will affect both previous and later stages. Nevertheless, suchengineering changes to incorporate technical or market information will help to create productsthat will satisfy the needs of consumers and even exceed their expectations. Thisraises the quality of the new product independently of the degree of innovation, since wehave not found empirical evidence of differences in quality between radical and incrementalproduct innovation.Given the available data, early involvement does not appear to be a factor that significantlyaffects the increase in new product quality, although this result may be due to the high correlationbetween this factor and the other basic principles of simultaneous engineering. Indeed,as mentioned in the theoretical background, these results support those researcherswho propose only two basic principles for simultaneous engineering, since early involvementis an aspect which can be analyzed either under multifunctional teams or concurrentworkflow.Although much attention has been focused in this paper on theoretical and empirical aspects,the design of the study and the analysis of the hypothesis, there are a number oflimitations which necessitate careful evaluation of the results obtained.Firstly, the model contains subjective variables, and for this reason a questionnaire wasused, despite the problem of low rates of return which is reflected in this study. Furthermore,since the information about the basic principles of simultaneous engineering as well as theGCG GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY - UNIVERSIA SEPTIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2011 VOL. 5 NUM. 3 ISSN: 1988-7116pp: 80-101