Like most engineers, I learned about rules of interchangeability back in school. These rules help companies decide whether a product change should require a new item number or simply a revision of the same item number. The standard “form, fit and function” (F/F/F) definition has served the needs of discrete manufacturers well for a long time. But what about formulated products?

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If a manufacturing company committed to deliver 100 items per day to a customer from a line capable of producing only 50 items per day, it would not stay in business for long. Capacity planning is standard for manufacturing, but many companies don’t diligently capacity plan their new product development (NPD) pipeline, and some expect managers to just “figure it out”. Later, they wonder why their projects are consistently late or miss target market windows.

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