TASK 9 - Concept Familiarization
TASK 9 - Concept Familiarization
Course/Year: BSA-1
Subject: Operations Management
Schedule: B4 (1-4:30)
2. Explain the innovation process as to: sources, goals, failures, and diffusion.
• Businesses achieve innovation in a variety of ways. For example, firms may incorporate
users in focus groups (user-centered approach), work closely with so-called lead users
(lead user approach), or users may adapt their products themselves. Improved quality,
expansion of the product, improved production processes, reduced materials, reduced
environmental damage, product/service replacement, reduced energy consumption,
and so on. The success of these innovation objectives is heavily dependent on the firm's
environment. Failure, on the other hand, can occur in innovative programs. Some
causes will be external to the organization and beyond its control, while others will be
internal and ultimately within the organization's control. The diffusion of innovations
theory describes the pattern and speed with which new ideas, practices, or products
spread through a population.
3. Describe Product Concept Generation. Why is it important to follow the four-part process to
determining a product or service that is worth a company investment.
• The most important step in the engineering design process is concept generation, or
getting ideas. It has four generic processes, the first of which is step one, Clarify and
Deconstruct the Problem, which focuses on defining customer requirements and
necessary functionality before moving on to design synthesis and system validation
while taking the entire problem into account. The second step is to search for existing
concepts related to both the overall problem and the sub-problems identified during the
problem clarification step. The third step is to Systematically Explore Solutions, which
entails organizing and analyzing all of the ideas.
4. What are the challenges associated with choosing a successful product design?
• Research and testing are the most difficult stages of product development. A product
may appear to be a success at first glance, but a closer look may reveal significant
complications. Some of the difficulties are due to external factors such as cost,
economic changes, competitor influence, company policy, and so on. Furthermore,
selecting a viable concept is the first challenge that arises when developing a product.