Product Design

 The biggest challenge today before the organizations is

designing new products and launching them in the market
 The entire process of Need Identification to Physical Manufacture
of Products involves three major phases viz. Marketing, Product
Development and Manufacturing
* Marketing suggests ideas for new products and provides
product specification for existing product lines
* Product Development translates the needs of customers given
by the Marketing into technical specifications and designing
various features into the product to meet the specifications
* Manufacturing selects the processes by which the product can
be manufactured
Product Strategies
 Market Pull: According to this strategy, company “should
make what it can sell”. Organizations should determine the
needs for types of products and then design and
manufacture them.
 Technology Push: This approach suggests that company
“should sell the products what it can make”. Company
with strong manufacturing base and R&D capability can
adopt this strategy.
 Inter-Functional Approach: In this approach, new product
introduction is inter-functional and requires cooperation
among marketing, engineering and other functions. This is
however difficult to achieve because of inter-departmental
rifts and rivalry.
Product Lifecycle

A - Introduction

B - Growth

C - Maturity

D - Decline A B C D
Phases in PLC
 Introduction: Marks introduction of the product (new/old)
into the market. Organizations have to invest heavily in
advertisement to make the product familiar to the
customers.
 Growth: Sales starts increasing at this stage because of
acceptability of the product by the customer and
competition is also limited.
 Maturity: The sales does not grow after attaining a point as
competitors now split the market share.
 Decline: Sales start declining as competitors come out with
better product features, advanced technology and reduced
prices.
Characteristics of Phases of PLC

Particulars Introduction Growth Maturity Decline

Product High Variety Increasing Dominant High Standard
Variety Standardization design feature Commodity
product
Volume Low Volume Increasing High Volume Decreasing
Volume Volume
Consolidation
Industry Small Medium Scale Few Large Survivors
Structure Competitions Companies Companies

Form of Product Product Quality Price & Price

Competition Characteristics & Availability Dependability
Product Design Process

Suppliers R&D Customers

Marketing Idea Generation Competitors
Product/Service Concept
Screening Ideas
Feasibility Study
Performance Specifications
Preliminary Design
Form Design
Design Revising & Manufacturing/Delivery
Specifications Functional Testing Production Specifications
Design Prototypes Design

Pilot Run & Final Test

Final Design & Process
New Product Launch
Plans
Idea Generation and Screening
 Design process begins with understanding the customers and
their needs.
 Internal sources of idea generation include sales personnel, R&D,
employees, market research, reverse engineering etc.
 External sources of idea generation include customers,
competitive products, strategic position of the firm, environment,
technology etc.
 Screening reduces the ideas to attractive, practicable and
profitable few
 Each of the dimensions of the ideas to have a better evaluation,
are scored on a 0 - 10 scale with weight attached as per
dimension. The resulting aggregate score helps in deciding
which idea to progress and which one(s) to drop.
Feasibility Study
 It consists of a market analysis, economic analysis and
technical & strategic analysis
 Market Analysis through customer analysis and market
survey assesses the demand for the proposed product
 Economic Analysis aims at establishing the production
and development cost and estimates profit potential using
such methods as cost-benefit analysis, NPV, IRR etc.
 Technical and Strategic Analysis is concerned with
technical viability of the product with respect to
technology, process of manufacture, availability of
materials etc.
Preliminary Design
 It involves building a prototype, testing the prototype, revising
the design and retesting until a viable design is determined.
Design incorporates both form and function.
 Form Design refers to physical appearance of a product, shape,
size, color, image, market appeal, special identification etc.
 Production Design is concerned with how the product will be
made. It includes simplification, standardization and modularity.
* Simplification attempts to reduce the number of parts, sub-
assemblies and options into a product.
* Standardization refers to use of commonly available and
interchangeable parts and sub-assemblies.
* Modular Design consist of combining standardized building
blocks in a variety of ways to create a unique finished product.
Pilot Runs and Testing

 PilotRun makes necessary adjustments in

the manufacturing process before finalizing
the design
 Market Testing is carried out to check the
acceptability of the product in the defined
market and customer group
 Market testing helps a firm to know whether
customer will accept and buy this product on
launching in the market
Final Design and New Product Launch

 Final design consists of detailed drawings and

specifications for the new product such as
workable instructions for manufacture, job
descriptions, work instructions and programs for
computer assisted machines etc.
 Launching the new product/service involves
coordinating the supply chain and rolling out
marketing plans. Marketing and Production in
fact should work in a coordinated way during
this phase.
Product Reliability
 Reliability is considered to be the most important product
attribute ahead of price, style and many other product
features
 It is defined as the probability that a product will perform
as intended for a prescribed life time under specified
operating conditions
 The product failure rate is highest during its initial use and
also in the wear-out phase (“bathtub curve”)
 Reliability Engineering determines ‘failure rate’ and ‘useful
performance life’ for each new product based on financial,
technical and consumer considerations
Contd..

 The probability that a product will function

successfully equals the product of the
probabilities of all its sub-components
 The following design decisions are made by an
engineer:
1) what reliability is required of each
subcomponent to achieve the overall product
reliability?
2) which subcomponents should be used most
economically to meet this required reliability?
Ergonomic Considerations in
Production Design

 Endeavor to apply relevant information about

human behavior to product design, methods of
its use and environment in which people work
 As ‘worker system’ (human part of machine) can
not be redesigned for increasing effectiveness,
product/machine/equipment must be adapted to
the worker
 In any product/equipment, all information
displays must be located so as to ensure clear
access and visibility
Techniques For Improving Design
Process

 Concurrent Engineering
 Multi-Functional Design Teams
 Design for Manufacturing & Assembly
(DFMA)
 Design Review
 Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
Concurrent Engineering

 Involves doing several activities in different

functions simultaneously
 Sequential approach to product design involves
considerable lead time to introduce the product
in the market, missed market opportunity etc. if
any change in the design is warranted and hence
concurrent design is a solution to it
 Helps in doing the design right first time and
avoiding waste of time between design,
manufacturing, quality and marketing functions
Multi-Functional Design Teams

 Cross-functional teams serve to integrate the

various activities of the product development
effort and help in information sharing on a
regular basis thus enhancing each other’s
capabilities
 The team approach places greater demands
on members in terms of learning new skills
enabling them to absorb changes rapidly
DFMA
 Is a concept by which a designer thinks about how a
product will be made as it is being designed so as to
resolve potential production problems found early in the
design process
 Basic principles of DFMA are:
* minimize number of parts
* use common components and parts
* use standard components and tools
* simplify assembly
* use modularity to obtain variety
* make product specifications and tolerance reasonable
* design products to be robust
Design Review
 Follows formal procedures before finalizing design for
analyzing possible failures and assessing rigorously value
of every part and component of it
 Following techniques can be used:
1) Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA)
anticipates failures and prevents them from occurring
2) Value Engineering (VE) focuses on function of the
product rather than on structure and tries to maximize
economic value of it or component relative to its cost
3) Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) lists failures and their causes
in a tree format
QFD

 Translates voice of the customer into design

requirements and product specifications
 Uses inter-functional teams from design,
marketing and manufacturing
 QFD matrix helps in translating customer
requirements into concrete engineering goals
 It is a tool that promotes better understanding of
customer demands and design interactions,
involves manufacturing in the design process
and provides documentation of design process