Towards an integrated process model for new product development with data-driven features (NPD ³ )

New information and communication technologies are changing the way products are developed, manufactured, serviced and managed over the product’s lifecycle. Today’s smart products not only consist of their physical components, but are also endowed with intelligence. Data and the capabilities to process data into knowledge and eventually decisions have become critical components of the product itself and of the process to develop/operate the product. This paper investigates how engineers and a new functional role, data scientists, can effectively collaborate in a mixed team for new product development with data-driven features (NPD ³ ). We focus on the concept development stage, typically the fuzziest phase of product development. In this paper, an integrated process model is explored by revisiting the traditional new product development (NPD) process model as well as the knowledge discovery and data mining (KDDM) process model. Then a case study of the development of an application-specific unmanned aircraft system (UAS) is used to examine the proposed model.