Understanding current and future customer needs, translating them into product requirements, and incorporating them into new product design are activities considered critical to the success of product development processes. Several strategies are adopted by companies in order to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in the development of new products. Among them is customer integration into this process. This article aims to identify in a sample of capital good firms the practices adopted for customer integration, compare these practices with those suggested in the literature, and propose suggestions for managing this integration. Case studies were conducted in five manufacturing companies in the sector of capital goods. Since they develop products that are generally implemented in the processes of their clients, companies in this sector require greater customer integration. The analysis of the literature review on the subject and findings of the case studies indicate that customer integration practices have positive effects on the performance of the product development process. On the other hand, it was observed that these companies need a greater degree of formalization of these practices by adopting standard procedures and support techniques. Therefore, a set of recommendations and considerations were proposed for a better management of these customer integration practices in product development processes.
Product development; Customer integration; Capital goods companies; Customer integration activities
