D is a big company. There are more than 3000 professionals in R&D team. Apparently, R&D center is the largest department among all. Of course, it is divided into some different secondary departments affiliated to R&D center, and some big secondary departments again divided into several third-level departments. Obviously, it’s important to reasonably plan the organizational structure, it has significant impacts on the operational efficiency and success rate of developing new product.
In the past, R&D center was divided into different Product Lines leading and managing the new product development, Resource Line including structural design, electronic design, software design and test center to support Product Lines accomplish new product development, and other management departments such as R&D process management, administrative management, operational management, and so on.
A great organizational change transformed the structure. The Resource Line was cancelled. All structural designers, electronic designers, software designers and testers were allocated to different Product Lines according their original speciality. Besides, set up Hardware Platform Development Department including common structural design, packaging design, electronic test, data management addressing common problems related to all product lines and cultivating and transporting new staff designers for product lines.
Proofed by facts, it was a successful change, the efficiency of new product development was significantly improved, the time of NPD was contracted, the quality of product was improved, and the respond speed to problems was increased. As we all knows, a project team consists of program management, designers, testers, manufacturing engineers, QA, buyers, planners and so on. It is a temporary team from different divisions, the program manager have to overcome difficulties from cross-department management. Before, although program management members, designers and testers were all attached to R&D center, but they belonged to different third-level departments, program manager had no authority to directly lead designers. However, now they all transferred to Product Lines, program manager can directly lead them, allocating tasks and conducting performance appraisal, contributing to good coordination.
In my opinion, this successful change came from company’s correct strategic decision of “Product Line orientation”, getting strong support from top. Besides, excellent organizational structure planners, efficient execution of operational division, and positive coordination of changed departments all contributed to the success of change.
