Product Design

AE ZG531/ AEL ZG531/ DE

ZG541/ DM ZG541/ MM ZG541
BITS Pilani Lecture -1
Samata Mujumdar
Mechanical Engineering
Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

AE ZG531/ AEL ZG531/ DE ZG541/ DM ZG541/ MM ZG541

Product Design
Lecture No. 1

• Prof. Samata .S. Mujumdar
• Professional Background -
- BIW design (Body in Works)
- PGBU: Power Generation
Business Unit (production line
automation with Special
Purpose Machines (SPMs)

– TVS Motors Ltd – 2001 to 2004 (SPM Design

Engg.)
– GM Technical centre – 2004 to 2006 (CAM)
– Cummins India Ltd – 2006 to 2009 (Senior
Manager – PGBU)
– Pune University - MIT College of Engineering –
Assistant Prof. Mech. Dept. – 2010 – 2018
– BITS Pilani Off Campus – March 2018 onwards…

3
Text Books and Reference Books &
other Resources
Notes : Articles provided in class
Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger, “Product Design and
T1 Development”, 4th Edition (SIE), McGraw Hill Education
(India), 2013.

David G. Ullman, “The Mechanical Design Process”, 4th

R1
Edition, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009.

Kevin Otto and Kristin Wood, “Product Design: Techniques in

R2 Reverse Engineering and New Product Development”,
Pearson Education, 2001.
PD text book

5
 Product Design – Introduction
Characteristics of Successful Product development
Challenges of Product Development
Generic product development process
Product Development Organisations

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 - A product is artificially made (human
made)
- Can also be licensed/rented etc.
Product - Can also be a service
- Can also be offered for free (ex:
advertising business model)

 A product is something
sold by an enterprise to
its customers.
 Product development is
the set of activities
beginning with the
perception of a market
opportunity and ending
in the production, sale,
and delivery of a
product

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Products are Always Improving

Evolution of products

8
Evolution of mobile phones
Evolution of products

9
Sales lifetime: Life of product in
market before it is replaced by From Product Dev company perspective
the next upgraded version
(product lifecycle) (manufacturer/designer/seller)

Attributes of products

10
 What is Design?
• “Good design is good business.”
– Thomas Watson, Jr., President, IBM
• “Good design is good citizenship.”
– “Milton Glaser, Designer”
• “Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made
creation that ends up expressing itself in successive
outer layers of the product or service. Design is not just
what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
– Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

09-01-2023 11
 Engineering Design ????
• Mechanical engineering design
• Electrical engineering design
• Architectural design
• Industrial design
• Food science design
• Material design
• Aerospace design
• Bridge/roadway design
Product Design
 Product design focuses on the product’s function, which is a
description of what the object does.
 Related to the function are the product’s form, materials, and
manufacturing processes.
 Form includes the
 product’s architecture,
 its shape,
 Its color, its texture, and other factors relating to its structure.
 Of equal importance to form are the materials and manufacturing
processes used to produce the product.
 These four variables—function, form, materials, and manufacturing
processes—are of major concern to the designer

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 Role of Product Design

Source: The Mechanical Design Process by David G. Ullman

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What does the customer want?
• Modern Product attributes desired by customers
– Quality / Performance of product is an order qualifier
(Not order winner)
– Value worth the price
– Robust performance (Taking into account adverse
environmental conditions and usage patterns)
– Easily serviceable
– Maintenance free
– Higher second value (implies less wear and tear)

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Why study Product Design?
 Economic success of most firms depends on their ability
to identify needs of customers
 Translate those needs into physical products at an optimal
cost
 Craftsmanship style of working is on rapid decline
 Intuition based
 Poor repeatability
 Lack of customer focus
 Bad Perception that people will buy “whatever is
designed good”

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 Why is the design important?
 An example of the relationship of the design process to cost comes from
Xerox.
 In the 1960s and early 1970s, Xerox controlled the copier market.
 However, by 1980 there were over 40 different manufacturers of copiers in the
marketplace and Xerox’s share of the market had fallen significantly.
 Part of the problem was the cost of Xerox’s products. In fact, in 1980 Xerox
realized that some producers were able to sell a copier for less than Xerox was
able to manufacture one of similar functionality.
 In one study of the problem, Xerox focused on the cost of individual parts.
 Comparing plastic parts from their machines and ones that performed a similar
function in Japanese and European machines, they found that Japanese firms
could produce a part for 50% less than American or European firms.
 Xerox attributed the cost difference to three factors:
 materials costs were 10% less in Japan, tooling and processing costs were
15% less, and the remaining 25% (half of the difference) was attributable to
how the parts were designed.

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Q&A 
• Q&A
• Suggestions / Feedback
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