Product Design

Product design process

Six Phases of Generic product development
process
Phase 0: Planning

It precedes the project approval and the launch of

the actual product development process.
• Project mission statement
• Business goals
• Target market
• Constraints
• Assumption
 Product Design Process
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Phase 1: Concept Development

➢ Needs of the target market are identified

➢ Alternative product concepts are generated and one
or more selected for further testing
➢ A concept is a description of the form, function and
features of a product accompanied by a set of
specifications, an analysis of competitive products
and an economic justification of the project.
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Phase 2: System –level Design

➢ Definition of product architecture and decomposition

of the product into subsystems and components
➢ Final assembly scheme for the production system is
defined.
➢ The output of this phase usually includes a
▪ Geometric layout of the product
▪ A functional specification of each of the product’s
subsystems
▪ A preliminary process flow diagram
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Phase 3: Design Detail

➢ Complete Specification of the geometry,

materials and tolerances of unique parts
➢ Identification of standard parts to be
purchased from suppliers
➢ A process plan is established and tooling is
designed for each part
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Phase 4: Testing and Refinement

➢ Construction and evaluation of multiple

preproduction versions of the product
➢ Early prototypes are build (using the same geometry
and material as production version, but not the
actual processes to be used in production)
➢ Prototypes are tested to determine if it works as
designed and satisfies customer needs
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Phase 5: Production ramp-up
• Product is made using the intended
production system
• Purpose is to train work force and solve
problems if any in the production process
• Product is supplied to preferred customers for
pretesting.
• The transition from Production ramp-up to
Ongoing Process happens gradually
• The product is launched and made available
for widespread distribution
 Types of Products
• Generic product(Market Pull)
• Technology Push products
• Platform Products
• Process Intensive products
• Customized Products
• High Risk Products
• Quick Build products
• Complex products
 Market Pull products
➢The term ‘Market Pull’, refers to the
need/requirement for a new product or a
solution to a problem, which comes from
the market place.
➢The need is identified by potential
customers or market research.
➢Market pull sometimes starts with potential
customers asking for improvements to
existing products.
Example: Sporting goods, furniture
 Technology Push Product
➢Technology Push is when research and
development in new technology, drives the
development of new products.
➢Technology Push usually does not involve
market research.
➢It tends to start with a company developing
an innovative technology and applying it to
a product. The company then markets the
product.
➢Example: Walkman, Touch screen
technology
 Platform Product
• A platform product is built around a preexisting
technological subsystem
• A set of common elements like underlying technical
components, parts or technology that are shared across
a range of the company’s products.

Advantages of a product platform:

• a. Increased speed in developing new products
• b. Manufacturing can be flexibly adjusted to create new
products
• c. Reduced development costs
• d. Ability to upgrade products easily
• e. Reduce testing on new products as common
components are used
Example: Computer electronics, printers
 Process Intensive Products
• Characteristics of the product are highly
constrained by the production process, so that
the product design cannot be separated from the
production design phase even at the concept
phase.
• In many cases, process intensive products are
produced at very high volumes and in bulk ,
rather than discrete goods,

Example: food, chemicals, paper,

semiconductors
 Customized Products
• Customized products are slight variations
of existing/standard configurations,
developed in response to specific order by
the customer.
• Developing these products consist of
setting values of design variables like
physical dimensions and materials

Example: fabric printing, switches, motors,

batteries
 High Risk Products
• High risk products entails unusually large
uncertainties related to technology or market
• The generic product development process is
modified to face high risk situations in early
phase of product development.
• Testing activities happen as early as Possible

Example :Pharmaceuticals, space systems

 Quick Build Products
• Building and testing prototype models is a rapid process
so that the design-build-test cycle can be repeated
many times.
• The system level design(phase 2) entails decomposition
of the product into high, medium and low priority
features.
• The advantage of rapid iteration is to achieve a more
flexible and responsive product development
process(spiral product development process).

Example: Software, Cellular phones

 Complex systems
• System must be decomposed into various
subsystems and these are decomposed further
into components.
• These components/subsystems are developed
by many teams working in parallel.(concurrent
engineering)
• It is followed by system integration and
validation

Example: Airplanes, jet engines

 Product Design Criteria
• Designing for the Customer
– Quality Function Deployment(QFD): A process that
helps a company to determine the product
characteristics important to the consumer and to
evaluate its own product in relation to others
– Value Analysis/ Value Engineering: Value Analysis is
defined as analysis with a purpose of simplifying
products and processes by achieving equivalent or
better performance at lower cost
• Designing for manufacture and assembly
• Designing for Environment/Eco-design
 Quality Function Deployment
• QFD uses a series of matrix diagrams that
resemble connected houses
• Customer requirements are defined by market
research
• These are weighted based on their relative
importance to the customer
• Customer is asked to compare and rate
company’s and competitors products.
• Product characteristics that require improvement
are identified
• Next a set of technical characteristics of the
product is developed
 House of Quality
5

Importance
Trade-off matrix

3
Design
characteristics

1 4 2

Customer Relationship Competitive

requirements matrix assessment

6 Target values
 Value Analysis (VA)
➢Objective is to simplify products and processes
➢Eliminate unnecessary features and functions
➢Used by multifunctional design teams
➢Define essential functions of an item
➢Determine the value of the functions
➢Determine the cost of providing the functions
➢Compute Value/Cost ratio
➢Design team works to increase the ratio
 Design for Manufacturing and
Assembly
Designing a product so that it can be produced
and assembled easily and economically

– Simplification
• reducing number of parts, subassemblies,
or options in a product
• Avoid tools, separate fasteners and
adjustments
• Design for ease of assembly, minimal
handling and proper presentation
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– Standardization
• using commonly available and
interchangeable parts
• Using repeatable, well understood process

– Modular Design
• combining standardized building blocks, or
modules, to create unique finished products

– Allow for efficient and adequate testing and

replacement of parts
Design Simplification
Design for Environment
 Measuring Product Development
Three Performance dimensions
1] Time to Market
– Frequency of new introductions
– Time taken from initial concepts to market
introduction
– Number started and number completed
– Actual Vs Plan
– Percentage of sales coming from new
products
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2] Productivity
– No of engineering /manufacturing hours
– The cost of materials
– Tooling cost
– Actual Vs Planned cost
3]Quality
– Conformance Quality: The degree to which the
product or service design specifications are
met(reliability of the product)
– Design Quality: The product performance features
compared to customer expectations. Inherent value of
the product in the market place
– Defects per million opportunities(DPMO): A metric
used to measure variability of a process