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This thesis investigates how Virtual Reality can be adopted into the New Product Development process in manufacturing companies. While Virtual Reality is recognized as promising technology for design reviews, virtual prototyping and cross-functional collaboration, many manufacturing companies struggle to move beyond pilots and isolated use. Prior research often treats people, process and technology separately and offers limited insight into how adoption unfolds in practice over time.

The purpose of this thesis is to facilitate the adoption of Virtual Reality technology into the New Product Development process by identifying challenges and corresponding mitigation factors. The research is based on two retrospective multiple case studies in two large manufacturing companies in the automotive and heavy vehicle industries. Empirical data was collected through a survey, semi-structured interviews, internal documents, observations and informal discussions. Three appended papers examine Virtual Reality adoption at multiple levels, and the thesis performs a joint analysis across these studies.

The findings show that challenges related to Virtual Reality adoption are systemic and primarily concern misalignments between people, process and technology across strategic, tactical and operational levels. Identified challenges include a lack of clear ownership and roles, dependence on a few key users, limited time and standardized ways of working, late and ad-hoc use in projects, immature tool chains and demanding preparation and data handling. To address these challenges, the thesis identifies seven mitigation factors, including establishing dedicated facilitators and key user roles, securing management commitment, establishing ownership of VR work, strengthening vertical alignment, reducing data complexity and planning Virtual Reality adoption as a staged, long-term maturity process.

Overall, the thesis contributes a multi-level, process-oriented understanding of Virtual Reality adoption in New Product Development processes and provides empirically driven guidance on how to design and steer VR initiatives towards sustained, value-adding use in manufacturing.