Decision Making Processes for Global Product Development - a Case Study

Global Product Development (GPD), outsourcing and offshoring of product development is a widespread phenomenon on today’s global economy, and consequently most engineering manufacturing companies will have to make decisions regarding how to organise their product development activities globally. This paper investigates decision making in the GPD context, partly by summarizing existing literatures and studies in the field, and partly through a case study of decision making processes in a global engineering company. Through interviews a range of GPD decisions were mapped and analysed in order to investigate how decisions are made and which information decisions are based on. The study found that decision making is not always structured, and that prioritised decision making is more dominant than planned decision making. The findings set the stage for further analysis of decision making in GPD, and for development of support tools decision support tools for manager, which are based on empirical evidence and experience.