Identifying and Analysing Delay Factors in High-Tech New Product Development (NPD) Electronics Projects. How can the Impact of Delay Factors be Lessened through Mitigation?

  • Anil Fasiludeen

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

Abstract
This study examined delay factors in UK high-tech electronics New Product Development (NPD) projects, utilising the Cause-and-Effect Diagram (Root Cause Analysis) to identify root causes and mitigations to reduce the impact of such delays. This research employed a three-stage mixed methodology: a) a literature review; b) a pre-Delphi stage consisting of three rounds of in-depth interviews with four NPD experts; c) the use of the e-Delphi application for three rounds of Delphi consultations with 13 NPD experts.
Delays in development stage of NPD project are one of the critical challenges project managers encounter while managing UK high-tech NPD electronics projects. After Pre-Delphi stage, the findings revealed a number of causes (384) and root causes (53) contributing to the project delay factors (12) as well as mitigation strategies (311) to reduce delay impact. After Delphi stage, the panel reached a consensus on ranking delay factors based on their impact on the project schedule, frequency of occurrence, and degree of difficulty to manage or control. This study contributes to project management methodologies, including human element, systems thinking, project complexity, and project success and failure, by identifying numerous causes and mitigations that are applicable to these methodologies. The employment of e-Delphi makes a distinctive contribution to the methodology by providing future researchers in NPD projects with an understanding of the management and application of e-Delphi, which is a novel endeavour in the NPD domain.
Several causes and mitigations are novel whereas some are relevant to various types of NPD projects and projects in other industries such as IT, software and construction. The study contributes to the stage-gate approach by highlighting its limitations and suggesting that managing highly complex and uncertain high-tech electronics NPD projects will require a modified scalable stage-gate approach.
Keywords: UK high-tech electronics NPD project, delay factor, mitigation, e-Delphi, root cause analysis
Date of Award28 Jan 2025
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorPhilip Brabazon (Supervisor) & Ashraf Labib (Supervisor)

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