HOW DO DIFFERENT COORDINATION MECHANISMS BETWEEN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND MANUFACTURING INFLUENCE FIRM PERFORMANCE?

In the literature several suggestions have been put forward for tools, methods and mechanisms to coordinate new product development (NPD) and manufacturing. However, evidence of the operational performance effects of many of these approaches is at best limited. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding of how various coordination mechanisms work in different contexts. Using a survey consisting of data from 677 manufacturing firms from 19 countries worldwide, we test how coordination mechanisms relate to operational performance, and how context moderates these relationships or affects performance directly.
We find standardization and organization design to be the most effective coordination mechanisms, while the use of NPD tools and techniques has negative performance relationships. There are no relationships between the use of IT applications for NPD purposes, and performance. The relationships between standardization and organization design, respectively, and performance are positively moderated by company size. Furthermore, innovativeness moderates the relationship between organization design and performance positively.
For managers, our findings indicate that NPD-manufacturing coordination generally pays off. Especially organizational mechanisms (concurrent engineering, job rotation, collocation and liaison roles) and standardization have positive relationships with most aspects of performance.