PD-Trak™ New Product Development Software
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PD-Trak™ is an integrated project management, portfolio management,
and resource management software solution. It can be used for
development of discrete and process-oriented manufactured products,
software development, and service development. It provides project
management, gate review, and product development tools and a common
document repository to support product teams as well as portfolio
management software functions, multi-project resource management and
performance measurement tools for executive management.
PD-Trak's functions include the following:
Portfolio Management Software
PD-Trak™ maintains a portfolio of approved and unapproved projects.
It uses both financial metrics and a scoresheet of user-defined criteria
to prioritize projects. It provides graphical representations of the
portfolio mix with bubble charts, pie charts and product roadmaps. A
separate portfolio can be maintained for new product development (NPD)
projects, six sigma projects, and IT projects. The portfolio can be
viewed by product line or business unit or consolidated across the
enterprise.
Pipeline Management / Resource Management
Software
The pipeline management and resource management functions help
analyze and plan project resource requirements to determine availability
of resources and consider actions to respond to resource conflicts
assuring a smooth flow of projects through the product pipeline.
Resources can be planned by resource type early in the project and then
more detailed resource planning and assignment by individual can be
developed as the project is fully planned out. Various options to
address resource constraints can be flexibly modelled with this resource
management software.
Project Management Software
PD-Trak™ provides an extensive set of project management tools to
help the project team plan, coordinate, and manage the project to the
defined phase/stage-gate process. This project management system is
integrated with Microsoft Project and creates a project plan based on
the defined product development process. The system provides additional
functions to manage the project including risk management planning,
action item planning and statusing, and templates for individual
functional planning (e.g., marketing plan, manufacturing plan, software
development plan, verification or test plan, etc.). The software's
performance measurement capabilities include a wide range of metrics to
measure performance of the project, the product, and the overall project
portfolio.
New Product Development Process Software
PD-Trak™ allows you to define your product development process and
manage to that process. You start by defining your process' phases /
stages, gates. You then define the tasks, document outputs, and
responsibilities by phase. Finally, you create document templates to
define the content of required documents and what needs to be done to
create that content. The system guides teams through the NPD process
with task assignments, task statusing, and deliverable templates.
Multiple processes can be established, e.g., new product, product line
extension or upgrade, technology development, contracted development,
etc.
The PD-Trak™ product development software may be configured to match
any NPD process that comprises a serial set of project stages or phases
separated by gate reviews or other key milestones.
We provide our NPD Process-in-a-Box™,
a set of processes based on best practices that can serve as a starting
point to define an improved new product development process. Our
pre-defined processes and templates are available for hardware/hardgoods
products, software products, service products, and six sigma projects.
Multiple processes can be supported, e.g., standard development process,
a streamlined process for product line extensions/modifications, OEM
proposals, technology development projects, etc.
Stage / Phase-Gate Software
PD-Trak™ is based on a stage/phase-gate process. The software
coordinates the dates and required information for gate reviews and
ensures that appropriate information (e.g., a business case, marketing
plans, etc.) is considered at each gate review and throughout the
project. PD-Trak™ provides a customizable scoresheet to evaluate each
project at each gate review.
Ideation or Ideas Management
PD-Trak™ captures suggestions and ideas for new products on a
New Product Ideas list, provides a
repository to collect documentation and information related to the
product idea, and provides a simple screening method for product
management or executive management to use to evaluate product ideas.
Product Lifecycle Management Software or PLM
Software
The PLM software functions provide a repository and a limited
document management capability primarily for non-technical project data
as well as technical data if no other PLM solution exists. Each Project
File serves as a repository for the project team's documents. Functions
exist to easily add documents and capture meta data to organize and sort
various types of documents.
Product Development Software Tools
Product development software functions provide tools to support
product and process development including bills of material, integrated
supplier planning, quality function deployment (QFD), target costing,
failure modes and effects analysis, design for manufacturability
guidelines or checklists, and control plans.
Team Collaboration
PD-Trak™ facilitates team collaboration with contact lists, team
calendars, shared documents, task statusing and collaborative tools. A
common Project File that contains all of the project team's documents
and works in progress further facilitates collaboration.
Six Sigma Software and Tools
PD-Trak™ contains templates and tools to facilitate six sigma
projects. The tools include a cost/benefit analysis, cause and effect
analysis, root cause analysis, a SIPOC diagram, stakeholder analysis,
pareto analysis, process mapping, quality function deployment, failure
mode and effects analysis (FMEA), and control plans. A separate
portfolio can be established to support and manage a portfolio of six
sigma improvement projects.
For further information, please contact us.
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