The AMF Development Process

AMF Bowling is a market-pull enterprise. AMF generally drives its development process with a market need and seeks out whatever technology is required to meet that need. Its competitive advantage arises from strong marketing channels, strong brand recognition, and a large installed base of equipment, not from any single proprietary technology. For this reason, the technology-push approach would not be appropriate. AMF products are assembled from components fabricated with relatively conventional processes such as molding, casting, and machining. So the AMF product is clearly not process intensive in the way a food product or a chemical is. Bowling equipment is rarely customized for a particular customer; most of the product development at AMF is aimed at new models of products, rather than at the customization of existing models. For this reason, the customization approach is also inappropriate. AMF chose to establish a development process similar to the generic process. The process proposed by the AMF engineering manager is illustrated in Exhibit 2-6. The representation of the development process used by AMF is a hybrid of those used in Exhibits 2-2 and 2-5, in that it shows the individual activities in the development process as well as the roles of the different development functions in those activities. Note that AMF defines the key functions in product development as marketing, engineering!design, manufacturing, quality assurance, purchasing, and customer service. Also note that there are three major milestones in the process: the project approval, the beginning of tooling fabrication, and the production release. Each of these milestones follows a major review. Although AMF established a standard process, its managers realized that this process would not necessarily be suitable in its entirety for all AMF products. For example, a few of AMF's new products are based on technology platforms. When platform products are developed, the team assumes the use of an existing technology platform during concept development. Nevertheless, the standard development process is the baseline from which a particular project plan begins.
References and Bibliography
Many current resources are available on the Internet via www.ulrich-eppinger.net Stage-gate product development processes have been dominant in manufacturing firms for the past 30 years. Cooper describes the modem stage-gate process and many of its enabling practices. Cooper, Robert G., Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch, third edition, Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA, 2001.