Introduction to the Product Development Process

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Introduction to the Product Development Process

• Jonathan Weaver
• UDM Mechanical Engineering Department
• weaverjm_at_udmercy.edu

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References

• Karl T. Ulrich Steven D. Eppinger Product
  Design and Development. Third Edition.
  McGraw-Hill, 2004.
• Ullman, David G. The Mechanical Design Process.
  Second Edition. McGraw-Hill, 1997.
• Pugh, Stuart Creating Innovative Products Using
  Total Design. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.,
  1996.
• Bishop and Magleby A Review of Technology Push
  Product Development Models and Processes,
  Proceedings of DETC04, DETC2004-57496.

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Big Opportunities Come From Big Problems

• Show khosla9.mp4 (available at STVP)

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Picturephone The Answer to a Question Nobody
Asked
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Agenda

• Intro to Product Development
• A Generic Product Development Process
• A Closer Look at the Concept Development Phase
• IDEO as an Example
• What does all of this have to do with design,
  innovation, and creativity?
• Final Remarks

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Product Development

• Product
• A product is something sold by an enterprise to
  its customers.
• Product Development
• Product development is the set of activities
  beginning with the perception of a market
  opportunity and ending in the production, sale
  and delivery of a product.
• Here we will focus on products which are
  engineered, discrete, and physical.

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Who Designs and Develops Products?

• Product design is an interdisciplinary activity
  requiring contributions from nearly all the
  functions of a firm
• A function (in organizational terms) is an area
  of responsibility usually involving specialized
  education, training, or experience
• Three functions are almost always central to a
  product development project
• - Marketing
• Design
• Manufacturing

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The Challenges of Product Development

• Some of the characteristics that make product
  development challenging are
• Trade-offs
• Dynamics
• Details
• Time pressure
• Economics

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The Product Development Process

• A process is a sequence of steps that transforms
  a set of inputs into a set of outputs
• A product development process is the sequence of
  steps or activities that an enterprise employs to
  conceive, design, and commercialize a product
• Some organizations define and follow a precise
  and detailed product development process, while
  others may not even be able to describe their
  processes

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A Generic Product Development Process

• We will consider here a generic product
  development process that can be used in a
  market-pull situation
• The input to the process is a mission statement
  and the output of the process is the product
  launch
• Mission statement identifies the target market
  for the product, provides a basic functional
  description of the product, and specifies the
  business goals of the effort results from a
  well-executed product planning phase
• Product launch occurs when the product becomes
  available for purchase in the market place

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• One way to think about the product development
  process is as the initial creation of a wide set
  of alternative product concepts and then the
  subsequent narrowing of alternatives and
  increasing specification of the product until the
  product can be reliably and repeatably produced
  by the production system

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)
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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Note Rarely does the entire process proceed in
  purely sequential fashion, completing each
  activity before beginning the next. In practice,
  many of the activities may be overlapped in time
  and, at almost any stage, new information may
  become available or lessons learned which can
  cause a loop back or iteration. There is little
  point to cluttering the process diagram with
  overlaps and iterations, so well use the
  simplified appearing linear model.

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Concept development
• The needs of the target market are identified,
  alternative product concepts are generated and
  evaluated, and a single concept is selected for
  further development
• A concept is a description of the form, function
  and features of a product and is usually
  accompanied by a set of specifications, an
  analysis of competitive products, and an economic
  justification of the project

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• System-level design
• Includes the definition of the product
  architecture and the division of the product into
  subsystems and components
• The final assembly scheme for the production
  system is usually defined during this phase
• The output of this phase is usually a geometric
  layout of the product, a functional
  specification of each of the products
  subsystems, and a preliminary process flow
  diagram for the final assembly process

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Detail design
• Includes the complete specification of the
  geometry, materials, and tolerances of all the
  unique parts in the product and the
  identification of all the standard parts to be
  purchased from suppliers
• A process plan is established and tooling is
  designed for each part to be fabricated within
  the production system
• The output of this phase is the control
  documentation for the product

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Testing and refinement
• Involves the construction and evaluation of
  multiple pre-production versions of the product
• Early (alpha) prototypes are usually built with
  production-intent parts (parts with the same
  geometry and material properties as intended for
  the production version of the product but not
  necessarily fabricated with the actual process to
  be used in production)

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Testing and refinement (Cont.)
• Alpha prototypes are tested to determine whether
  or not the product will work as designed and
  whether or not the product satisfies the key
  customer needs
• Later (beta) prototypes are usually built with
  parts supplied by the intended production process
  but may not be assembled using the intended final
  assembly process
• Beta prototypes are extensively evaluated
  internally and are also typically tested by
  customers in their own use environment

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Testing and refinement (Cont.)
• The goal of the beta prototypes is usually to
  answer questions about performance and
  reliability in order to identify necessary
  changes for the final product

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Production ramp-up
• The product is made using the intended production
  system
• The purpose is to train the work force and to
  work out any remaining problems in the production
  process
• The artifacts produced during production ramp-up
  are sometimes supplied to preferred customers and
  are carefully evaluated to identify any remaining
  flaws
• The transition from production ramp-up to ongoing
  production is usually gradual and continuous

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A Generic Product Development Process (Cont.)

• Production ramp-up (Cont.)
• At some point is this transition, the product is
  launched and becomes available for widespread
  distribution.
• Next a deeper look at Concept Development
  arguably the most critical stage of the process!

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Concept Development
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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Identifying customer needs
• The goal of this activity is to understand
  customers needs and to effectively communicate
  them to the development team
• The output of this step is a set of carefully
  constructed customer need statements, organized
  in a hierarchical list, with importance
  weightings for each need
• Many breakthrough innovations are the result of
  addressing unarticulated customer needs detected
  by careful observation of customers and
  anthropological research by the developing team

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Establishing target specifications
• Specifications are a precise description of what
  the product has to do
• They are the translation of the customer needs
  into technical terms
• Targets for the specifications are set early in
  the process and represent the hopes of the
  development team
• The output of this stage is a list of
  specifications
• Each specification consists of a metric and a
  target value for that metric.

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Analysis of competitive products
• (competitive benchmarking)
• An understanding of competitive products is
  critical to successful positioning of a new
  product and can provide a rich source of ideas
  for the product and production process design
• It is performed in support of the specifications
  activity as well as in support of concept
  generation and concept selection

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Concept generation
• The goal is to explore thoroughly the space of
  product concepts that may be applied to meeting
  the customer needs
• It includes a mixture of external search,
  creative problem solving within the team, and
  systematic exploration of the various solution
  fragments the team generates
• The result of this activity is usually a set of
  10 to 20 concepts, each typically represented by
  a sketch and brief descriptive text

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Concept selection
• Is the activity in which various product concepts
  are analyzed and sequentially eliminated to
  identify one preferred concept
• In some cases, proof of concept prototypes may
  be necessary to evaluate the function of various
  concepts and/or form models may be used to
  evaluate customer reaction to ergonomics and
  style
• The process usually requires several iterations
  and may initiate additional concept generation
  and refinement

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Refinement of specifications
• The target specifications set earlier in the
  process are revisited after a concept has been
  selected
• At this point, the team must commit to specific
  values of the metrics reflecting the constraints
  inherent in the product concept, limitations
  identified through technical modeling, and
  trade-offs between cost and performance

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Economic analysis
• The team, often with the support of a financial
  analyst, builds an economic model for the new
  product
• This model is used to justify continuation of the
  overall development program and to resolve
  specific trade-offs among, for example,
  development costs and manufacturing costs

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Concept Development (Cont.)

• Project planning
• The team creates a detailed development schedule,
  devises a strategy to minimize development time,
  and identifies the resources required to complete
  the project
• The major results of the concept development
  phase can be usefully captured in a contract book
  that contains the mission statement, the customer
  needs, the details of the selected concept, the
  product specifications, the economic analysis of
  the product, the development schedule, the
  project staffing, and the budget

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Adapting the Generic PDP

• The process shown so far is generic, and
  particular processes will differ in accordance
  with a firms unique context

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IDEO

• Next, lets watch how one particular firm
  develops a product, As we watch, think about the
  following questions
• Does IDEO follow a structured process?
• If so, how does it compare to the generic process
  just presented?
• What are the key enablers allowing IDEO to
  innovate?
• Note dvd available for purchase from ABC News
  (the Deep Dive Episode). A lower resolution
  version and can be found online a separate file
  will be posted which links to that version.

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Discussion

• What do you think of the resulting cart design?
• What does all of this have to do with design,
  innovation, and creativity?

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Final Remarks

• It is extremely important to follow a structured
  process to develop a new product or a new idea
• A structured process and creativity are by no
  means mutually exclusive
• We have presented a generic product development
  process which can be fine tuned for the
  particular types of products that your team (or
  company) develops
• There are opportunities for creative, innovative
  solutions at ALL phases of the product
  development process!
• A poor concept, flawlessly executed, will never
  be competitive!