Structuring a Portfolio for Selecting and Prioritizing Textile Products

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate a proposal on product portfolio management for the development of new products in a textile company. The research methods address the application of real data from the studied company. This work is characterized both as conceptual and field-based research. It constructs a proposal based on existing theory and involves an empirical application of that proposal. By using the portfolio selection and prioritization proposal, the company was able to select new products for development in a structured way. As continuity for this work, the paper suggests the application of product selection and prioritization for other organizations.

Appendix

Table 2 shows an overview of previous work cited in the course of this work.

The worksheet header for selection and prioritization of new product development project can be seen in Fig. 2 (it is divided into two parts).

The fields of the worksheet are as follows:

• Product number: product family identification.

• Business: type of business (i.e., bath).

• Impact on business strategy: “high”, “medium” or “low” impact. It should consider aspects such as market share, added value, expansion of new markets, and how to handle competition.

• Stage: indicates whether the product is “active” or “standby”.

• Origin: indicates whether the idea of the product originated from the company, customer demands, or suppliers.

• Technological difficulty: “high”, “medium” or “low” difficulty regarding the development of the product.

• Class: indicates whether the product is “platform” or “derivative”. Platform represents a solution for customers; both involve significant changes to the manufacturing process for the product (Cauchick Miguel 2008). Derivatives range from low-cost versions of an existing product or improvement of an existing production process (incremental changes in the product).

• Objective: refers to the classification of the product structure according to Griffin and Page (1996), which considers the level of innovation; this classification includes “new to the world”, “new to the firm”, “adding to the existing line”, “improvements and revisions of existing products”, “repositioning”, and “cost reduction”.

• Sale forecasting: estimates average volume of monthly sales and the percentage of expected contribution margin.

• Expected duration: estimated lifetime of the product in the market, which is classified as 6–12 months, 1–2 years, and more than 2 years;

• Importance: indicates whether the product is “common” or “specialty”.

• Priority: the product receives a priority number from 1 to 5 (1 denotes the highest priority), which defines their sequence in the product development process.

Table 2 Overview of the articles of authors