The Product Development Process

• Product
– It is a sequence of steps that transforms as set of inputs
into a set of outputs.
• Product Development Process
– It is the sequence of steps or activities that an enterprise
employs to conceive, design and commercialize a product.
– Many organizations have their own development
procedure. It may differ within the organization for their
different products. Some organization may not able to
describe the process. Some have well defined procedure
for developing the product.

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 Reasons for well defined process
• Quality Assurance
– Well defined phases and checkpoints ensures the quality of the product.
• Coordination
– Encourages the team effort with well defined roles, which results in savings in cost, time
and effort.
• Planning
– As process is well defined in phases, schedules becomes easy so that of planning.
• Management
– It becomes very easy for the managers to implement the control measures for the
successful development of the product.
• Improvement
– Documentation and reviews incorporated in the process identifies the opportunities for
improvement.

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 Approaches for the PD Process

1. Creation of wide set of

Then narrow down
alternatives

Collect information on
2. Information processing
objectives, resources and
system
then develop product

3. Risk management Identify potential risk,

system design to eliminate

3
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 Six Phases of Generic Development
Process

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 Planning
• Referred to as “phase zero” because it precedes the project
approval and launch of the actual product development process.
• Begins with opportunity identification guided by corporate strategy
which includes assessment of technology developments and market
objectives.
• Output will be project mission statement, which specifies the target
market, business goals, key assumptions and constraints.
• Opportunity identification – gathering, evaluating and choosing
from a broad range of product opportunities.
• Product Planning – Subsequent product planning process

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 Concept Development
• Here, the needs of the target market are identified,
alternative product concepts are generated and
evaluated, and one or more concepts are selected for
further development and testing.
• A concept is a description of the form, function, and
features of a product and is usually accompanied by a
set of specifications, an analysis of competitive
products and an economic justification of the project.

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 System Level Design
• Includes the definition of the product architecture,
decomposition of the product into subsystems and
components, and preliminary design of key
components.
• Initial plans for the production system and final
assembly are defined in this phase.
• Output will be a geometric layout of the production, a
functional specification of each of the product’s
subsystems, and a preliminary process flow diagram for
the final assembly process.

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 Detail Design
• It includes the complete specification of the geometry, materials, and
tolerances of all of the unique parts in the product and identification of all
of the standard parts to be purchased from the suppliers.
• A process plan is established and tooling is designed for each part to be
fabricated within the production system.
• The output of this phases is the control documentation for the product
which contains the drawings or computer files describing the geometry of
each part and its production tooling, the specifications of the purchased
parts, and the process plans for the fabrication and assembly of the
product.
• Three critical things the are finalized in this phase: material, production
cost and performance.

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 Testing and refinement
• It involves the construction and evaluation of multiple
preproduction versions of the product.
• Early (alpha) prototypes are usually built with production-
intent parts which means parts with the same geometry
and material properties as intended for the production
version of the product but not necessarily fabricated with
the actual processes to be used in production.
• Alpha prototypes are tested to determine whether the
product will work as designed and whether the product
satisfies the key customer needs or not.

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 Testing and refinement
• Later (beta) prototypes are usually built with actual parts
supplied by the intended production processes but may not
assembled using the intended final assembly process.
• Beta prototypes are extensively evaluated internally and
are also typically tested by customers in their own use
environment.
• The goal for the beta prototypes is usually to answer
questions about performance and reliability in order to
identify necessary engineering changes for the final
product.

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 Production ramp-up
• In this phase, the product is made using the intended production system.
• The purpose of the ramp-up is to train the workforce and to work out any
remaining problems in the production processes.
• Products produced during this phase are sometimes supplied to preferred
customers and are carefully evaluated to identify any remaining flaws.
• The transition from this phase to ongoing production is usually gradual.
• At some point of time in this transition, the production is launched and
becomes available for widespread distribution.
• A post launch project review will occur shortly after the launch. Review
includes assessment of the product from both commercial and technical
perspectives and is intended to identify ways to improve the development
process for future projects.

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 Concept Development: The Front-End
Process
• Involves the more coordination among other
functions. Otherwise known as front-end process
which contains many interrelated activities as shown

Mission Development
Statement Identify Establish Generate Select Test Plan plan
Set Final
Customer Target Product Product Product Downstream
Specifications
Needs Specifications Concepts Concept(s) Concept(s) Development

Perform Economic Analysis

Benchmark Competitive Products

Build and Test Models and Prototypes

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 Concept Development: The Front-End
Process
• Entire process proceed in sequential fashion
sometimes may be overlapped and iteration is also
sometimes required.
• Dashed arrows shows where the iterations are
required.
• The repetition of nominally complete activities is
known as development iteration.

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 Identifying customer needs
• The goal of this activity is to understand customers
needs and to effectively communicate them to the
development team.
• The output of this step is a set of carefully
constructed customer need statements, organized in
a hierarchical list, with importance weightings for
many or all of the needs.

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 Establishing target specifications
• Provides a precise description of what a product has to do.
They are the translation of the customer needs into technical
terms.
• Targets for the specifications are set early in the process and
represent the hopes of the development team.
• Later these specifications are refined to be consistent with the
constraints imposed by the team’s choice of a product
concept.
• The output of this stage is a list of target specifications.
• Each specification consists of a metric, and marginal and ideal
values for that metric.

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 Concept Generation
• The goal is to thoroughly explore the space of product
concepts that may address the customer needs.
• It includes a mix of external search, creative problem
solving within the team, and systematic exploration of
the various solution fragments the team generates.
• The results of this activity is usually a set of 10 to 20
concepts, each typically represented by a sketch and
brief descriptive text.

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 Concept Selection
• It is the activity in which various product concepts
are analyzed and sequentially eliminated to identify
the most promising concept(s).
• The process usually requires several iterations and
may initiate additional concept generation and
refinement.

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 Concept Testing
• One or more concepts are then tested to verify that
the customer needs have been met, asses the
market potential of the product, and identify any
short-comings that must be remedied during further
development.
• If the customer response is poor, the development
project may be terminated temporarily and some
earlier activities may be repeated as necessary.

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 Setting final specifications
• The target specifications set earlier in the process are
revisited after a concept has been selected and
tested.
• At this point, the team must commit to specific
values of the metrices reflecting the constraints
inherent in the product concept, limitations
identified through technical modeling, and trade-offs
between cost and performance.

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 Project Planning
• Here, team creates a detailed development schedule,
devises a strategy to minimize development time and
identifies the resources required to complete the project.
• The major results of the front end activities can be
usually captured in a contract book, which contains
mission statement, the customer needs, the details of
the selected concept, the product specifications, the
economic analysis of the product, the development
schedule, the project staffing and the budget.
• It serves to document the agreement between the team
and the senior management of the enterprise.
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 Economic Analysis
• The team, with the help of financial analyst, builds an
economic model for the new product.
• This model is used to justify continuation of the overall
development program and to resolve specific trade-offs.
• An early economic analysis will almost always be
performed the project before the project even begins,
and this analysis is updated as more information
becomes available.
• It is one of the ongoing activities.

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 Benchmarking of competitive products
• An understanding of competitive products is critical
to successful positioning of a new product and can
provide a rich source of ideas for the product and
production process design.
• Competitive benchmarking is performed in support
of many of the front-end activities.

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 Modeling and Protoyping
• Every stage of the concept development process involves
various forms of models and prototypes.
• These may include,
– Proof-of-concept models
• Which help the development team to demonstrate feasibility
– Form only models
• Which can be shown to customers to evaluate ergonomics and style
– Spread sheet models
• Shows the technical trade-offs
– Experimental test models
• Which can be used to set design parameters for robust performance.

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 Other Variants Product Development
Process
• In addition to generic product development process
(Market – Pull), there are other variants with respect to
the products and the demanding scenarios. They are
– Technology Push Products
– Platform Products
– Process Intensive products
– Customized products
– High Risk Products
– Quick-Build Products
– Complex Systems

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 Market – Pull Products
• The team begins with a market opportunity and
selects appropriate technologies to meet customer
needs.
• Process generally includes planning, concept
development, system level design, detail design,
testing and refinement and production ramp-up
process.

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 Technology-Push Products
• The team begins with a new technology and then finds
an appropriate market.
• E.g. New production process – apply to all products. In
general it is applied to basic material process as it is
involved in all the applications (Casting).
• Process includes matching technology and market.
Concept development assumes a given technology. And
remaining phases is same as generic.
• Success is based on meeting the customer needs and the
technology cannot be that easy to copied by the
competitors.
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 Platform Products
• The team assumes that the new product will be built
around an established technological subsystem.
• E.g. Computer – and its allied components.
Operating System – Windows…..?????; Processor – I7
• Concept development assumes a proven technology
platform. Other remains same.
• Similar to that of technology push products.

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 Process Intensive Products
• Characteristics of the product are highly constrained by the
production process.
• Either an existing production process must be specified from
the start or both product and process must be developed
together from the start.
• E.g. Food, Chemicals, paper, etc…
• Production process is defined by the products. Modifications
can not be made alone in design as outcome will be different
product.
• Hence new product along with new production process is to
be developed simultaneously.

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 Customized Products
• New products are slight variations of existing
configurations.
• Similarity of products allows for a streamlined and highly
structured development process.
• E.g. Motors, Switches, batteries, etc.
• Either physical dimensions or materials are mostly
varied.
• Sometimes products are developed for the specific
customer needs. E.g. Modern IT Software development
• Requires highly detailed development process.

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 High Risk Products
• Technical or market uncertainties create high risks of failure.
• Risks are defined early and tracked throughout the process.
• Risks includes technical risk (performance), market risk
(customer preference), budget and schedule risk.
• E.g. Pharmaceuticals, Space systems, etc.
• Analysis and testing activities take place as early as possible to
avoid risk.
• Multiple solution paths are explored in parallel to avoid risk.
• Design reviews assess risk levels on a regular basis in order to
reduce the risk in every phase.

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 Quick Build Products
• Rapid modeling and prototyping enables many design-build-
test cycles
• Detail design and testing phases are repeated a number of
times until the product is completed or time/budge runs out.
• E.g. Software, Mobile phones.
• Rapid iterations are done to achieve more flexible and
responsive products. Hence, sometimes called as spiral
development process.
• Testing will be done based on high, medium and low priority
features of the product till the time or budges finishes. Finally
eliminating the low priority features.

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 Complex Systems
• System must be decomposed into several subsystems
and many components during system level design phase.
• Subsystems and components are developed by many
teams working in parallel, followed by system integration
and validation.
• E.g. Airplanes, jet engines, automobiles.
• Multiple product architecture are considered.
• Special teams are assigned to integrate and validate the
overall system.
• Extensive testing and validation is done at all levels.

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 Product Development Process Flow

1. Generic product development process

2. Spiral product development process
3. Complex systems development process

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 Generic Product Development Process
Planning

Mission Approval

Concept Development

Concept Review

System – Level Design

System Spec Review

Detail Design

Critical Design Review

Testing and Refinement

Production Approval

Production Ramp-Up

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 Spiral Product Development Process
Planning

Mission Approval

Concept Development

Concept Review

System – Level Design

Cycle Plan
Review
Design

Many Iteration Cycles

Built

Test

Cycle
Reviews

Production Ramp-Up
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 Complex Systems Development Process
Planning

Mission Approval

Concept Development

Concept Review

System – Level Design

Cycle Plan
Review

Design Design Design Design

Test Test Test Test

Integrate and Test

Production
Approval

Validation and Ramp-Up

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