PALO ALTO, Calif. (PRWEB)
May 17, 2021

Instrumental, the leading manufacturing optimization platform, recently completed and shared its first annual State of New Product Introduction (NPI) Survey findings. The study gathered feedback from over 100 leaders in electronics design, manufacturing, and engineering to identify trends, changes, challenges, and industry innovation that arose as a result of the 2020 pandemic.

The data revealed that, in the past five years, 43% of new electronic products have missed their initial launch dates, indicating a long-term industry failure to adapt to the intensifying forces of increasing product complexity, faster delivery timelines, and increased supply chain volatility.

Key takeaways from the 2021 State of New Product Introduction Survey include:

• Electronics manufacturing is experiencing an efficiency crisis: While NPI leaders cite their #1 responsibility as on-time product delivery, they report that 43% of new product programs in the last 5 years were delayed – indicating a problem that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic and further worsened during it.
• Leaders know engineering capacity is a massive problem: Leaders cited that engineering bandwidth and headcount is as significant a threat to program delivery as supply chain disruption, even at a time when supply chains are seeing historically high volatility. When breaking down engineering time, teams report that 76% of engineering time is spent on non-engineering tasks like inefficient communication, reactive issue discovery, and stakeholder management.
• Leaders have struggled to deploy technology to expand engineering capacity: Despite acknowledging the need for improved engineering capacity, most organizations are lagging when it comes to adoption of technology that could automate time-consuming development tasks like forensics and data analysis. Only 10% of teams reported using an AI-based defect detection system, and over 91% still rely primarily on spreadsheets for things like task tracking and analysis.

When planning for NPIs this year, the report tells us that leaders are most concerned with hiring and improving existing teams. Of those who participated in the study, 65.43% are focused on improving engineering efficiency and 50.62% of respondents are planning to explore suppliers or CMs in a new region.

The report also shines a light on how 2020 has driven innovation in the processes deployed in 2021. When asked what the most impactful change teams had made to their NPI process since 2020, respondents cited:

• Changes to their manufacturing process e.g. formalized and standardized checklists etc (31.15% of respondents);

Made changes to people and training e.g. hired more staff, re-defined roles, increased collaboration efforts (24.59% of respondents); and

• Implemented new tools and made more use of virtual meetings (19.67% of respondents).

“If there’s one takeaway from the 2021 State of Electronics NPI, it’s clear that 2021 is presenting an opportunity for electronics brands to leapfrog their competitors by updating their product development processes to truly embrace new technologies that let them do more with existing engineering teams,” said Instrumental Co-Founder and CEO Anna-Katrina Shedletsky.

“The companies that use data do better, and we believe it’s because they’re able to actually measure and optimize their team’s performance” said Shedletsky.

The survey additionally found:

• Leaders overwhelmingly do not agree that their companies are advanced in implementing innovative technologies, which suggests the industry is brittle and slow to change.
• People operations are the key theme when considering barriers to supply-chain level issues.
• Builds are delayed frequently enough for them to have a measurable and notable impact on business costs and staff efficiency.

To review all of the survey insights, download the report at instrumental.com/new-product-introduction-report-2021/.

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