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Product development process has a considerable effect on factors such as time to market and quality of product which are vital for manufacturing companies to remain competitive. Therefore, study of the factors which influence the product development process such as characteristics of products and production systems is necessary to support and improve the product development process. Since most of the studies have been conducted in the context of high-volume manufacturing industries, the influences of characteristics of low-volume products and production systems on the product development process in such industries have not been considered sufficiently. In this paper, characteristics of low-volume products and production systems, their inter-relations and their influences on the product development process have been studied through a multiple case study. A general map of characteristics of low-volume products and production systems and their inter-relations was presented in this paper. Moreover, the influences of these characteristics on product development process including the reduced complexity of the process and lack of opportunities for test and refinement were discussed.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how the characteristics of low-volume manufacturing industries influence the product introduction process and factors which can facilitate that process in low-volume manufacturing industries.

Design/methodology/approach: A literature review in combination with a multiple-case study were used to achieve the purpose of the paper. The multiple-case study was based on two product development projects in a low-volume manufacturing company.

Findings: The main identified characteristics of the product introduction process in low-volume manufacturing industries were a low number of prototypes, absence of conventional production ramp-up, reduced complexity of the process, failure to consider the manufacturability of the products due to an extensive focus on their functionality, and increased complexity of resource allocation. It was determined that knowledge and experiences from prior production of similar products could serve as a facilitator of the manufacturing process.

Research limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study is that the identified characteristics and facilitating factors are confined to the internal variables of the studied company. A study of the role of external variables during the product introduction process such as suppliers and customers could be the subject of future studies.

Practical implications: This research will provide practitioners in low-volume manufacturing industries with general insight about the characteristics of the product introduction process and the aspects that should be considered during the process.

A critical part of new product development projects is the industrialization process of new products which affects both time and the cost. The industrialization of new products or variants in low-volume production systems has some specific challenges which are caused by characteristics of low-volume products and production systems. Therefore, an exploratory case study is made within two Swedish manufacturing companies to understand these challenges and compare the industrialization process in high and low volume production systems. The results of the multiple case studies indicate four challenges including knowledge transfer from the projects into production, development of the work instructions, the need for a higher level of training of the operators and production system design and the obligatory tailoring of the new products to the existing production systems.

Reducing disturbances during start of production of new products is of high importance to assure that products reach the market on-time with the intended quality and volume. Therefore, identification and elimination of sources of such disturbances is necessary. Since the literature about such disturbances in low-volume manufacturing industries are limited, this paper is aimed to identify the common sources of such disturbances and the possible solutions to mitigate them in low-volume manufacturing industries. A multiple-case study has been conducted to achieve this aim. The results show that main sources of disturbances are lack of opportunities to test and refine products, considering the production system “as is” and putting extensive focus on product functionality rather than its manufacturability. Moreover, using the knowledge and experiences from production of previous similar products is identified as a source of learning and compensation for lack of opportunities for test and refinement.