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The high level of competition and the rapidly growing technology development has created new challenges for today's businesses where they are forced to deliver more customized products at a lower price and a shorter time period. This places high demands on the companies' ability to design and develop better products in a more efficient way. In addition to developing products, the design process focuses on securing long-term success for the company by developing nourishing skills. However, to achieve an effective design process the companies must improve their ability to plan as well as use their knowledge base in a more efficient manner. Toyota's product development system is a critical component for companies to address challenges that they’re facing and offers a great potential to create significant competitive advantages. Toyota's product development system is designed to streamline the design of processes and products, as they often create restrictions on business and describes the importance of making use of a coordinated effort by several functions, and strives to integrate processes, people, technology and tools in an effective manner.

The concept of Concurrent Engineering includes parallel efforts rather than a time-consuming serial work and seeks to minimize delays in the product development process. Concurrent Engineering enables for quality products, to reach the market faster at a lower cost and allows the company to quickly and flexibly adapt to changing demands and conditions through parallel efforts. Like Toyota’s product development system, Concurrent Engineering promotes an integrated approach where multifunctional teams work towards a common goal striving to solve problems at an early stage.

Propulsion and Control in Västerås, a division within Bombardier Transportation, is currently suffering from extensive engineering changes and struggles to uphold time plans and budgets. The thesis will therefore cover the complete product development process where focus has been directed towards the processes and conditions that could enable for an effective product development process. During the thesis work the underlying causes for the problems mentioned above, have been identified. Internal documents regarding the company's current process has been reviewed and interviews have been carried out in order to evaluate the company’s current situation. During the thesis work a comparative study has been conducted at a large company within the Mälardalen-region. This study has been used as a practical example to reinforce the theoretical reasoning and has additionally allowed for further examination of a company's product development process.

The thesis has resulted in a number of suggestions for improvements, where the main action areas are covered by cross-functionality, routines, follow-up, supplier involvement and prototypes. Another action area that has been identified is front-loading which aims at examining several alternatives and solving problems as well as creating countermeasures at an early stage. These six areas were found to have a significant role in creating an effective product development process and are considered to be relevant for the company's current situation.