Identifying product change drivers and their financial impact on PDP performance: a study conducted in a power meter assembling company

Abstract

The transformations in the power sector and in its market coupled with their influence-exerting factors will bring changes to the products of that market. In a company of this sector, the cost to proceed with those changes is well known, but not the amount spent and their causes. This is an exploratory research which aims to collect data on product change, identify its drivers, and relate them to the cost of these changes. The study objective is to spot the critical points which need to be improved in the company’s PDP. A bibliographic review on the theme showed no similar works. Also, the company’s procedures were identified, its costs and documents were recognized, and the drivers of these changes were verified. However, the results obtained did not allow us to match the drivers to the changes in costs because the change registrations are fragmented. Nevertheless, the results show that the company’s procedures allows for the tracking of only 8% of the changes conducted. They also show that the reached percentage represents only 12% of the cost spent on the development of the product analyzed. That is an alarming sum, since this number tends to grow. Although, at first, it was believed that the drivers would exert great influence on the restructuring of the company’s PDP, it was possible to verify the relevance of adapting the procedures of registration and cost changes.

Keywords:
PDP; PDM; Performance assessment; Project change