To Evaluate the Role of Organizational Functions in New Product Development (NPD) (Emphasizing on the Auto Industry in Iran)

Entering the new century، has encountered companies with many competitive forces. The competition puts many challenges in front of companies and one of the most important one among them is New Product Development (NPD). NPD is a multidisciplinary concept and is considered in many researches، but the researches have not paid attention to role of different functions on NPD simultaneously. Considering this gap، this research is shaped and named “To evaluate the role of organizational functions in new product development (NPD)”. The research is looking for the effects of different roles on NPD through an integrated managerial model to manage NPD well. The research has integrated the major functions in NPD process. These functions are organized in a model to study their effects concurrently. The developed model has four sub-model including operation، financial، human resources and marketing. These functions and their roles have been integrated through considering the objectives of NPD. Based on literature review these objectives are considered as “cost، quality and time” which are set for products before the development. The research can be considered as applied one in terms of its objectives and descriptive in terms of data gathering. Based on the research method، hierarchical multiple regression is used to analyze the data for 122 projects on the auto industry in Iran. Findings of the research which are valuable to be considered to manage NPD projects show: - Using “concurrency and formality” through development process are associated with NPD objectives- Using a suitable organizational structure has a positive association with NPD objectives - Achieving NPD objectives have positive associations with product success in the market (in terms of sales and customer satisfaction).