Product Design

Product Design
The essence of business organization is the products and services it offers.

Product design should be closely related to the organization’s strategy.

It is a major decision, which affects quality, cost, time-to-deliver, customer

satisfaction, and competitive advantage.

Product design differs significantly depending on the industry.

 Reason for Product Design
 Organizations may get involved in product design / development or redesign for various
reasons:

a. Economic (low demand, excessive warranty claims, and the need to reduce cost)
b. Social and Demographic (population shifts)
c. Political, Liability or Legal (government changes, safety issues, new regulations)
d. Competitive (new product or services, new advertising or promotion)
e. Cost or availability (raw material, components, labour, energy)
f. Technological (in product components and process)
Key Questions
Is there a demand for it?
• Market size
• Demand profile

Can we do it?
• Manufacturability - the capability of an organization to produce an item at an acceptable
profit

What level of quality is appropriate?

• Customer expectations
• Competitor quality
• Fit with current offering

Does it make sense from an economic standpoint?

• Liability issues, ethical considerations, sustainability issues, costs and profits
Standard Products – cost effective, mass production, economies of
scale, Ford car

Customized Products – Customer’s satisfaction, variety of products,

Dell laptop, paint industry
Marshal Fisher - Functional Products, Innovative Products
It is a Strategic Decision for gaining competitive advantage
Steps Involved in Product Design
Phase 0 Planning

Phase 1 Concept Development

Phase 2 System-Level Design

Phase 3 Design Detail

Phase 4 Testing and Refinement

Phase 5 Production Ramp-up

 Phase 0: Planning

Output is the project

Includes assessment mission statement
Precedes Project Begins with corporate of technology which specifies the
Approval strategy development and target market of the
market objectives product, busines goal,
key assumptions
 Phase 1: Concept Development

Alternative product One or more concepts are

Needs of target market are
concepts are generated selected for further
identified
and evaluated. development and testing
 Phase 2: System Level Design

Geometric layout of the

product functional
Decomposition of the Final assembly scheme for specification of each of
product into subsystem the production system is the product subsystem
and components usually defined
- Process flow diagram for
the final assembly process
 Phase 3: Detail Design

Complete
specifications of all
Identification of all Process plan is Tooling is designed
parts, materials, and
standard parts established for each part
tolerance of all the
unique parts
 Phase 4: Testing and Refinement

Involves the construction and Prototypes are tested to determine

evaluation of multiple preproduction whether the product will work as
versions of the product designed.
 Phase 5: Production Ramp-Up

Need to train Products may be

Transition to
Product is made workers and supplied to
ongoing
using the intended resolve any preferred
production is
production system remaining customers for
gradual
problems evaluation
Feasibility Study Prototyping
• Build a prototype
– form design
Market analysis – functional design
Economic analysis – production design
Technical/strategic analysis • Test prototype
Performance specifications • Revise design
• Retest
• Form Design
– how product will look?
• Functional Design
– reliability
– maintainability
– usability
 Organization For Product Development
Product design and development is an interdisciplinary effort.
Marketing, Design, Finance, Production Planning functions also play a major role in
translating the concept to meaningful products that can be manufactured at an attractive cost.
 An organizational structure is vital for a good product development process.
 In the traditional approach, each functional area addressed its part in the product
development process in isolation.
Traditional approach is a time consuming approach.

Marketing Design Planning Procurement Production Finance

Production design
Simplification
◦ reducing number of parts, assemblies, or options in a product

Standardization
◦ using commonly available and interchangeable parts

Modularity
◦ combining standardized building blocks, or modules, to create unique
finished products
Design Simplification

(a) Original design (b) Revised design (c) Final design

Assembly using One-piece base & Design for

common fasteners elimination of push-and-snap
fasteners assembly
 Organization For Product Development
 Concurrent Engineering-
 Basic idea behind this is to put together a team of cross-functional professionals and provide them with necessary
resources and mandate for product development process.
Customers  Benefits of Concurrent Engineering:
a. Low Lead time
Marketing Planning
b. Increase productivity
c. Suppliers are involved in the product
development process. Suppliers can be
Design Concurrent
Engineering Procurement able to cut lead time for capacity
augmentation of the finished product.
d. Promotes consensus-based decision
making and increase the propensity for
Supplier Production
collective risk-taking.
Finance
 Product Design Criteria

 Designing for the customers:

◦ QFD (Quality Function Deployment)- approach to getting the Voice of Customer (VoC) into the
design specification of a product.

◦ Interfunctional teams from marketing, design engineering, and manufacturing.

◦ Begins with listening to the customer

 Market Research or Focus Group

◦ Converts the expectations and demands of customers into clear objectives and then transform to product specifications.

◦ Customer requirements forms the basis for the House Of Quality (HOQ), the model for QFD
 Quality Function Deployment
A: Determine the Voice of Customer (VoC).
B: Determine the various technical requirements with
D respect to VoC
C: Determine the relationship between the VoC and
B technical requirements.
D: Determine the correlation between the technical
requirements
A C E F E: Survey the customers to determine the importance
rating of various VoC
F: Survey the customers to determine the importance
rating of the company and its main competitors with
G respect to various VoC
G: Determine the rating of the company and its main
competitors with respect to various technical
requirements.
Quality Function
Deployment
 A Series of Connected QFD Houses

Product
characteristics
requirements
Customer

Part
A-1 characteristics

characteristics
Product
Process
House A-2 characteristics
of

characteristics
quality
Parts A-3 Operations

Part
deployment

characteristics
Process
Process A-4
planning

Operating
requirements
 Value Engineering (VE) / Value Analysis (VA)

Value Engineering (VE) is a set of activities undertaken to investigate the design of the
components in a product development process strictly from a cost-value perspective.

Objective is to achieve better performance at a lower cost while maintaining all functional
requirements defined by the customer.
Involves brainstorming such questions as:
◦ Does the item have any design features that are not necessary?
◦ Can two or more parts be combined into one?
◦ How can we cut down the weight?
◦ Are there nonstandard parts that can be eliminated?
 Value Engineering (VE) / Value Analysis (VA)
Value Analysis: More like a concept. Applicable primarily for a product
already being manufactured.
Value Engineering: More like an application of VA. Applicable for designing
a new product.

Example:
TATA Nano project had ambitious cost targets to bring to the market an Rs.
1,00,000 car. Expectedly, the supplier had to make the use of Value
Engineering efforts following also Target Costing.
Value analysis (VA)
Can we do without it? – redundancy of a part, unnecessary size, weight etc
Does it do more than is required? – unnecessary features
Does it cost more than it is worth?
Can something else do a better job?
Can it be made by
◦ a less costly method?
◦ with less costly tooling?
◦ with less costly material?

Can it be made cheaper, better, or faster by someone else?

Above questions are more like Method Study in IE.
 Design for X (DfX)
Design for Excellence
Excellence in terms of manufacturing, in terms of assembly, in terms of cost.
Systematic design approach that entails wide range of guidelines and standards targeting
different phases of product life cycle.
Design for
manufacturing

Design for Design for

Recycling Assembly

Design for
Reliability DfX Design for
Costing

Deign for Design for

Disassembly Service

Design for
Environment
 Design for Manufacturing (DfM)
Structured approach to ensure that manufacturing requirements and preferences are
considered fairly early in the design process.
Design guidelines are intended to be used by the designers during the design phase.
DfM guidelines address three set of generic requirements:
a. Reducing cost
b. Considering Operational Convenience
Product
Design Design Product
Problem Process Design
Reducing the variety:
◦ Minimize the sub-assemblies
◦ Avoid separate fasteners
◦ Use standard parts when possible
Design
◦ Develop Modular Design Guidelines
◦ Use repeatable & understood processes.
 Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA)
Design for Manufacturing (DfM)
Design for Assembly (DfA)
Both these concepts have some similarities in terms cost reduction (material, overhead and labour
cost), shorten the product development cycle time.
Differences between DfA and DfM:
◦ DfA focuses on reduction of product assembly cost by minimizing the number of assembly
operations and individual parts
◦ DfM focuses on reduction of overall production cost by minimizing the complexities of
manufacturing operations
Design for Environment
Design for environment
◦ designing a product from material that can be recycled
◦ design from recycled material
◦ design for ease of repair
◦ minimize packaging
◦ minimize material and energy used during manufacture, consumption and disposal

Extended producer responsibility

◦ holds companies responsible for their product even after its useful life
 Tools for Mass Customization
One of the fallouts of increased competition is the need to be more customer
focused.
Increase the complexity of production planning and investment in inventory.
Mass customization provides a structured set of ideas and tools to provide a
high level of customization without increasing the operational and production
complexity.
Facilitating Techniques:
◦ Delayed Differentiation
◦ Modular Design
 Delayed Differentiation and Modular Design
 Delayed Differentiation:
The process of producing a product or service but not quite completing production until
customer preferences are known.
◦ It is a postponement tactic
◦ Produce a piece of furniture, but do not stain it; the customer chooses the stain.
 Modular Design:
A form of standardization in which component parts are grouped into modules that are easily
replaced or interchanged
◦ Advantages
◦ Easier diagnosis and remedy of failures
◦ Easier repair and replacement
◦ Simplification of manufacturing and assembly
◦ Training costs are relatively low
Performance Measures For The
Product Development Process

Cost Based Measure

Design Effectiveness

Strategic Measure

Market Impact
Economic Analysis of Product Development Project
 Evaluate the economic impact of a new product on a company.
 For Example, CI-700’s (New photograph printer) development, the team faces several
decisions that it knows could have a significant impact on the product’s profitability:
• Should the team take more time for development in order to make the product available on
multiple computer “platforms,” or would a delay in bringing the CI-700 to market be too
costly?
Economic analysis is useful in at least two different circumstances
1. Go/no-go milestones
2. Operational design and development decisions
Building a base-case financial model
◦ Compute net present value
◦ Good estimates of cash flows
Economic Analysis of Product Development Project

The most basic categories of cash flow for a typical new product development project
are:
a. Development cost (all remaining design, testing, and refinement costs up to production
ramp-up)
b. Ramp-up cost
c. Marketing and support cost
d. Production cost
e. Sales revenue
Thank You