A model of product design management in the Spanish ceramic sector

Product design is an essential aspect of the process of new product development and innovation, the efficiency of which depends on the existence of some kind of management. However, there is no generally accepted agreement as to exactly what activities this management involves, nor any analyses of the most suitable context for it to develop in or of the relationships that link these activities with performance. In this paper, we study product design management in depth and examine in what way and in which contexts it contributes to an improvement in performance. In order to do so, we carried out a case study of four companies from the Spanish ceramic tile sector that also revealed the activities of an efficient product design management. These were divided into two phases of the product design process: the analytical‐conceptual and the technical‐creative phases.

[1]  S. D. N. Cook,et al.  Culture and Organizational Learning , 1993 .

[2]  B. Hedberg.  How Organizations Learn and Unlearn , 1981 .

[3]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[4]  Pedro Nueno.  Diseño y estrategia empresarial , 1989 .

[5]  Jon Sundbo,et al.  The Strategic Management of Innovation , 2002 .

[6]  Manuel Javier Arce,et al.  Sociedad estatal para el desarrollo del diseño industrial (DDI). El valor estratégico del diseño. , 1992 .

[7]  Tariq S. Durrani,et al.  Managing the product development process - (Part I: an assessment) , 1997 .

[8]  R. D. Buzzell,et al.  The PIMS Principles: Linking Strategy to Performance , 1987 .

[9]  David Jobber,et al.  Designing the front end: how attitudes towards new products are related to company performance , 1995 .

[10]  N. F. M. Roozenburg,et al.  Product design: Fundamentals and methods , 1996 .

[11]  Peter R. Dickson,et al.  Managing design in small high-growth companies , 1995 .

[12]  A. Lewin,et al.  Determining organizational effectiveness: another look, and an agenda for research , 1986 .

[13]  Tariq S. Durrani,et al.  Managing the product development process. Part II: case studies , 1997 .

[14]  Dave Ulrich,et al.  High-impact learning: Building and diffusing learning capability , 1993 .

[15]  Jean Hartley,et al.  Case study research , 2004 .

[16]  José María Iváñez Gimeno.  La gestión del diseño en la empresa , 2000 .

[17]  Stephen Potter,et al.  Winning by Design: Technology, Product Design and International Competitiveness , 1992 .

[18]  R. Roy,et al.  The commercial impacts of investment in design , 1993 .

[19]  R. Yin.  Case Study Research: Design and Methods , 1984 .

[20]  Robin Roy,et al.  Competitive by design , 1988 .

[21]  K. Eisenhardt,et al.  Politics of Strategic Decision Making in High-Velocity Environments: Toward a Midrange Theory , 1988 .

[22]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Toward a Social Understanding of How People Learn in Organizations , 1998 .

[23]  J. Brown,et al.  Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation , 1991 .

[24]  Donald P. Schwab,et al.  Research Methods for Organizational Studies , 1998 .

[25]  Karl E. Weick,et al.  Organizational Learning: Affirming an Oxymoron , 1999 .

[26]  C. Zornoza.  La medición de los resultados empresariales desde una óptica estratégica: construcción de un instrumento a partir de un estudio Delphi y aplicación a la empresa industrial española en el período 1983-96 , 1999, Revista de Contabilidad y Tributación. CEF.

[27]  M. Bruce,et al.  Managing external design professionals in the product development process , 1994 .

[28]  Barry Turner,et al.  Successful product design: Bill Hollins and Stuart Pugh, Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd, Guildford, 1990, £35.00 , 1991 .

[29]  Myfanwy Trueman,et al.  Innovation by design , 1999 .

[30]  Dorothy Leonard-Barton,et al.  The Factory as a Learning Laboratory , 2000 .

[31]  Margaret Bruce,et al.  WINNING BY DESIGN , 1992 .

[32]  Scott I. Tannenbaum,et al.  Enhancing continuous learning: Diagnostic findings from multiple companies , 1997 .

[33]  Vivien Walsh,et al.  Design, innovation and the boundaries of the firm , 1996 .

[34]  Angela Dumas,et al.  Why design is difficult to manage: A survey of attitudes and practices in British industry , 1989 .

[35]  Rachel Cooper,et al.  Marketing and Design Management , 1997 .

[36]  Alan Topalian.  The management of design projects , 1980 .

[37]  Christopher Lorenz,et al.  Harnessing design as a strategic resource , 1994 .

[38]  Margaret Bruce,et al.  The design agenda , 1996 .

[39]  Gregory Richards,et al.  Benchmarking the learning capability of organizations , 1997 .

[40]  Paul Gardiner,et al.  The strategic management of re‐innovation , 1989 .

[41]  Mary Anne Devanna,et al.  Strategic Human Resource Management , 1984 .

[42]  E. Nevis,et al.  Understanding Organizations as Learning Systems , 1995 .