New product introduction (NPI) process flowchart
New product introduction (NPI) process flowchart template: handover, manufacturability review, tooling, supplier qualification, pilot build and ramp-up.
How it works
Rename the lanes to your real owners
Replace Project manager, Engineering, Manufacturing / Operations, Supply chain, and Sales and marketing with the roles that actually hold the work. In smaller organisations the NPI engineer often covers two lanes; merge them rather than leaving a lane nobody answers for. Keep each lane to whoever is accountable for the step, not everyone who attends the meeting.
Define what "released" means at the handover
The handover review is only a gate if there is a list to check against. Agree what the pack contains — released drawings and bill of materials, tolerances and critical dimensions, specification and test method, packaging, target cost and the volume forecast — and record who accepts it on behalf of manufacturing. An incomplete pack should be a reason to stop, not a note in the minutes.
Give manufacturing a real veto on the DFM decision
"Design for manufacture issues?" is where the chart pays for itself, so decide in advance who arbitrates when manufacturing wants a change that engineering says alters the design intent, and how many times the loop may run before it escalates. An issue found here costs a drawing revision; the same issue found after tooling is cut costs a tool.
Write the pilot targets before the pilot runs
Record what the pilot must demonstrate: first-pass yield, defect rates by type, cycle time, and that units were built on production tooling by production operators against the released work instructions. Set the build quantity from your own volumes and from the confidence you need in the numbers rather than from habit. Criteria agreed after the build are always met.
Make the control plan and training real artefacts
"Release control plan and work instructions" should produce controlled, versioned documents: characteristics to be monitored, method, frequency, sample size, and the reaction plan when a result falls outside limits. Training is complete when operators and inspectors have been assessed against those instructions and the records exist, not when the session has been held.
Agree the exit criteria for the handover to steady state
Name what has to be true before the project closes: yield sustained over an agreed period, no open critical actions, documentation released, spares and support in place, and operations formally accepting ownership. Publish the chart where the team works, capture sign-off from the people named in the lanes, and route every change made after handover through change control so the version history shows what was agreed and when.
Frequently asked questions
What is the new product introduction (NPI) process?
NPI is the process that takes a finished, approved design into repeatable production and to market. It starts at design release and covers the handover to manufacturing, a manufacturability review, development of the manufacturing process and tooling, qualification of suppliers and materials, a pilot build, validation of the production process, the control plan and work instructions, training, a launch readiness decision, ramp-up to volume and handover to steady-state operations. Its output is not a design — it is a production system that can make the design consistently.
What is the difference between NPI and new product development?
Product development creates the design: concept, requirements, design iterations, prototypes and design verification. NPI industrialises it. The two are often run by different people with different measures of success — development is judged on whether the product meets its requirements, NPI on whether it can be built to cost, quality and rate. Design release is the boundary, and it is the point this chart begins. Where the two overlap in practice is the manufacturability review, which is why that decision loops straight back to engineering rather than being handled inside operations.
What are the stages of the NPI process?
This chart uses five: handover and manufacturability review; process and tooling development alongside supplier and material qualification; the pilot build and its yield and quality gate; validation, control plan, documentation and training; then launch, ramp-up and handover to steady state. Names vary by industry — automotive and aerospace organisations often align these to the phases of Advanced Product Quality Planning, and consumer electronics teams commonly use EVT, DVT and PVT build phases — but the sequence of decisions is broadly the same.
Who owns the NPI process?
A project manager or NPI engineer usually owns the project, but ownership of the product moves during it. Before handover the design belongs to engineering; after the handover to steady-state operations it belongs to manufacturing. The value of writing NPI as swimlanes is that this transfer becomes visible: manufacturing answers the manufacturability decision, supply chain answers for qualified suppliers and materials, sales and marketing answers for launch and channel readiness, and the project manager holds the two gates and the final handover.
What is a pilot build, and what should it prove?
A pilot build is a production run made on production tooling, by production operators, following the released work instructions, at a rate representative of normal operation. It is not another prototype run by engineers. It should produce evidence against targets set beforehand: first-pass yield, defect rates by type, cycle time, and confirmation that the process, tooling, fixtures and inspection method work together. The quantity depends on your volumes and on the confidence you need in the result, so set it deliberately rather than by convention. If the targets are missed, the honest route is defect investigation and another pilot, which is why that branch loops in this chart.
How does NPI relate to APQP, PPAP and ISO 9001?
Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) is a structured framework for planning product and process quality, published by AIAG and used widely in automotive supply chains; the control plan is one of its standard outputs, which is why it appears as a released document in this chart. The Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) is the associated supplier submission that demonstrates a part can be made to requirement under production conditions, and it typically sits inside the supplier and material qualification step. ISO 9001:2015 addresses design and development in clause 8.3 and control of production in clause 8.5, but it does not prescribe an "NPI process" by that name. A flowchart is a description of how you work, not evidence of conformance on its own — that comes from the records the process produces and from an assessment against the standard you are working to.