Lecture 7: The product lifecycle

Course code: DES641

Course name: Design for Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things

Dr Amar Behera
Email: [email protected]
Extension: 2401

Design Studio 605H-A

Diamond Jubilee Academic Complex
Learning Outcomes
• Understand and take a whole lifecycle approach to
product development
• Understand and articulate key concepts in reverse
engineering
• Apply reverse engineering concepts and lifecycle
management approach to new product
development for complex products
The product lifecycle
• It is said that a cat has nine lives
• But, this is true of products too!
• From introduction to consumers to no
longer available in the market
• Matter of debate - Exact number of stages
in lifecycle
• Raymond Vernon – Early proponent
• No product lasts forever
Lifecycle Stages

• Development
• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity/Saturation
• Decline
The development phase

• Product idea lives with manufacturer

• Idea researched, tested and prototyped
• Example – Tide Pods
• Took 8 years to develop
• 450+ sketches
• 6000 consumers researched
• Developed various formulas during the process
And then this happened ….
Brainstorm in groups of 2
• What makes for a successful product introduction?
• Go to menti.com
• Use code 5481 9460
 Points by students in a previous class

Providing clarity
Using visual Explaining key How your product
about the product
communication features beats the market
to consumers

Creating a brand
Generating identity – Talking
Target audience Product pricing
curiosity about your past
successful products
Product Introduction

Apple sold 1.9 million iPhone in its first year

Growth

• Consumers aware of your product

• Real growing demand
• Competitors cropping up
• New feature requests
• Customer queries
• 2008 – Google launched first Android smartphone
• Samsung introduced Galaxy tablet to compete with iPad
• By Jan 2011, smartphones outsold PCs
• Q4 2010 – 100 m smartphones v 93 m PCs
Maturity

• End of rapid growth

• Your item is a familiar product
• Target consumers own it
• Sales levelling off
• Most profitable stage and most innovative
• Updates to product
• Product prices may drop to stay competitive
• Differentiate your product and position your
brand
Decline
• Some products decline because they’ve aged out of the
market from a technological standpoint
• Example: Blackberry
• Others become obsolete because they’ve lost market share
and/or failed to adapt
• “Yahoo had a very narrow mind-set, which was, ‘We’re
going to grab content, put it in front of our users, and call it
a day. They owned the world, but they weren’t looking to
the sky.”
– Former creative director for Yahoo, Tom Parker
Idli ATM
Discuss in groups …
• What stage of the product lifecycle is this product in?
• What are the key engineered features in this product?
• How long will this product last in the market?
• What improvements can you add to this product?
• What ideas for future products can you imagine based
on this idea?
• How would you build this product based on what you
saw in this video?
What you just did …
• Involved elements of reverse
engineering
Reverse engineering: The process of
duplicating an existing component,
subassembly or product, without
the aid of drawings, documentation
or computer model
What is
Process of analysing a product to:
reverse
• Identify the components and their
engineering? interrelationships
• Create representations of the product in another
form
• Create the physical representation of that
product
What fields use
reverse
engineering?
• Software engineering
• Entertainment
• Automotive
• Consumer products
• Microchips
• Chemicals
• Electronics and mechanical
designing
 • When a new design comes to market, competing
manufacturers may buy one and disassemble it
Examples of to learn how it was built and how it works
reverse • A chemical company may use reverse
engineering engineering to defeat a patent on a competitor’s
manufacturing process
• In software engineering, good source code is
often a variation of other good source code
• Designers give a shape to their ideas using clay,
plaster, wood or foam rubber. Using RE
techniques, a CAD model is created which helps
manufacture the actual product
When is • Rapid product development (RPD) to compress
product development time
reverse • Example – Injection moulding companies need
engineering short tool and die development times. Using RE,
a 3D product can be captured in digital form,
used? remodelled and exported for rapid
prototyping/tooling
• Cost effective when there is high investment or
mass production
• If part is mission critical, RE may be attempted
even if not cost effective
Thought question
Briefly express your opinion on the following uses of
reverse engineering:
• “blindly”, “mindlessly” or “artlessly” copying another’s
design
• “blindly”, “mindlessly” or “artlessly” copying one’s own
design
• Hacking
• Exploiting
Be sure to consider how you would feel if it was your
design that was being copied or hacked or exploited
 F-22 (USA) Sukhoi PAK T- (USSR)

B-29 (USA) Tu-4 (USSR) X-29(USA) Sukhoi Su-47 (USSR)

Historical examples
Motivations for RE
Types of design Technology push

Market pull
Teardown or disassembly
Purposes
• Dissection and technical analysis
• Experience and knowledge
• Benchmarking

Exploded view of a gearbox

Teardown
process
 • Identify material of construction
for each part
• Metal, ceramic, glass, wood,
Teardown polymer, rubber, composite, etc.
process • Identify method of construction
or fabrication and processing
• Machining, casting, plastic
injection molding, forming,
welding, etc.
 • Disassemble and remove (i.e., subtract) one
component or feature of the assembly
• Attempt to operate the altered product
• Analyze the effect of subtraction
Subtract- • Deduce the function of the subtracted
component
and-Operate • Replace the component and repeat the
procedure for each and every other
component, one by one
• Translate the collection of subfunctions into
a function tree
Force flow diagrams
Product
structure
breakdown
Functional
models
 Example teardown

SureBonder Model LT-160

Disassembly
Force flow
diagram
Functional
model
Summary
• The key phases of the project lifecycle are: Development, Introduction,
Growth, Maturity and Decline
• Reverse engineering is a useful technique to analyze existing products and
use them to develop new products
• Teardown/disassembly is a crucial method of reverse engineering
Weekly Exercise
• Select an engineered product of your interest with atleast
10 parts
• Using sketches or computer drawings, show an exploded
view for this product
• Create the product structure breakdown as a hierarchical
tree
• Develop a force flow diagram for this product
• Develop a functional model for this product
• Reflect on how this product may be improved
References/Bibliography
• The product life cycle (PLC): are there 4, 5, or 6 stages?, wix.com
• Innovation Management and New Product Development, Paul Trott, Pearson
• Reverse Engineering, Robert W Messler Jr., 2014, McGraw Hill