The Ability to Minimize the Timing of New Product Development and Introduction: An Examination of Antecedent Factors in the North American Automobile Supplier Industry

The importance of overall timing in the new product development and the new product commercialization processes has been widely recognized in the literature. We examined 14 firm‐level practices, later reduced to four factors, that influence the ability to minimize new product development and introduction times overall relative to competitors. The factors are (1) human resource management, (2) synergistic integration, (3) supplier closeness, and (4) the design‐manufacturing interface. An empirical study of the North American automobile supplier industry found some support for the four‐factor model of antecedents to timing ability: synergistic integration and supplier closeness were both significantly related to development and introduction time minimization ability. The implications of these findings for product development managers and academic researchers are discussed.