BU385 Chapter 4 – Product Design Week 3
-There is a link between the design of goods and services and the success of an organization
-Product design is usually expensive and time consuming and many new product ideas die before being
marketed
-Product design – determining the form and function of the product
-Products are redesigned to invigorate their demand and to take advantage of new technology
Product Design Process
-There are four elements to rapidly create new goods and services and to bring them to consumers:
Product approval committee, structured development process, core teams, and phase reviews
-The product approval committee consists of top management and oversees and directs the
design/development activities
-Core teams are cross functional teams empowered to plan and lead the design/development projects
from idea to commercialization
-Phase reviews are milestones during a new product design/development project when the progress of
the core team is reviewed by the product approval committee
-The structured development process is the use of project management techniques. It involves breaking
each phase (stage) into steps and each step into activities
-The usual phases for product design are:
1. Idea generation and preliminary assessment
2. Building a business case: Determine what customers want, determine the nature of produce and
assess its technical feasibility, establish product goals and objectives, plan the nature of the production
process, and perform a complete financial analysis
3. Development of product and process: Translate the “voice of the customer” into technical product
specifications, such as product size, features, and so on
4. Testing and validation: perform external testing, finalize the product and process specifications, and
buy the machines and equipment and start trial runs
5. Launch
-A core team usually consists of a product manager, product designers, and manufacturing/operations
representatives
-This team-based approach of simultaneously designing the product and process is called concurrent
engineering
Sources of Ideas for New or Redesigned Products
-Front-line employees – they have seen the problems in manufacturing/assembly operations or service
delivery system caused by faulty design of the parts and products. Their feedback could improve the
redesigned product
-Suppliers of materials and parts/components and their contact within the organization, the purchasing
agents, can be a rich source of ideas about the design/redesign of purchased items
-Customers and their contact within the organization, the customer service and marketing/sales
employees, are aware of problems with products
-Marketing employees are often sources of ideas based on their studies of markets, buying patterns, and
familiarity with demographics
-Reverse engineering – dismantling a competitor’s product to discover what it is composed of and how
the components work, searching for own-product improvements
-Research and development (R&D) – lab scientists and engineers involved in creative work on a
systematic basis to increase knowledge directed toward product and process innovation
-Searching for new product ideas:
-Listen to market complaints
-Gaps in the market – 3M created the Pop-up tape dispenser to help those giftwrap by giving an
extra hand BU385 Chapter 4 – Product Design Week 3
-Explore niche markets – Insurance companies that provide insurance to those who are normally
rejected
-Using new technology – Like RIM did in the 1990s
-Create new market space – Body Shop did so by selling natural ingredients and healthy living
instead of glamour and beauty
Key Issues in Product Design
Life Cycle
-The decision to design a new substitute product or to redesign an existing product, and its timing,
depends on the nature and length of the product’s life cycle
-Life cycle – incubation, growth, maturity, saturation, and decline
-Incubation – when an item is introduced, it may be treated as a curiosity. Demand is generally
low because potential buyers are not yet familiar with the item
-Growth – with the passage of time, design improvements usually create a more reliable and
less costly product. Demand then grows
-Maturity – there are few, if any design changes and demand levels off
-Saturation – leads to a decline in demand
-Decline – companies attempt to prolong the useful life of a product by improving its reliability,
reducing costs of producing it, redesigning it, or introducing a new substitute product
-Some products to not exhibit life cycles – paper clips, pencils, etc.
-Services experience life cycles as well
-Wide variations exist in the amount of time particular product takes to pass through a given phase of
its life cycle
Standardization
-Standardization – extent to which there is an absence of variety in a part or product
-Ex. Having limited types, sizes, and colours
-Standardized products are made in large quantities of identical items: paper, gasoline, milk, etc.
-Large volume production an
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