USE OF PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES IN ENTERPRISES APPLYING CONCURRENT ENGINEERING APPROACH: A FIELD SURVEY IN TURKISH CERAMIC SECTOR

Abstract

The concept of concurrent engineering has been widely recognized by the companies to combine the different activities of different departments to enable fast and efficient product development method. An organization must have an appropriate business strategy to create successful new products or improve existing products in order to gain advantage over competitors. The basic strategic decision that needs to be made in product development is whether to adopt a proactive or reactive strategy. A proactive product development strategy explicitly allocates resources to search and identify opportunities and to preempt possible adverse effects. A reactive strategy needs to deal with the pressures from competition. In this study, the results of a field study to ascertain which strategy among reactive or proactive product development are used in ceramic sector firms employing concurrent engineering product development approach. In the framework of the study, 52 firms active in ceramic sector are surveyed with a questionnaire. The data of the survey is analysed with SPSS 15.00 statistical analysis software and the results are evaluated with clustering and MANOVA analyses. From the field survey perspective, the effectiveness of reactive and proactive product development strategies of the firms employing concurrent engineering approach is interpreted.