Ch 3 - Design of Products and Services Flashcards
Rather than thinking of design as a linear process requiring a set of steps, IDEO sees the process as overlapping thought spaces. ¨What do these spaces refer to?
∙ Inspiration—the problem or opportunity that motivates the need for a new design;
∙ Ideation—where model prototypes, visual pictures, or quantitative analysis is done to test ideas;
∙ Implementation—where ideas are made into new products and services.
Human desirability, business viability, and technical feasibility are the basic tenets of the IDEO design thinking process, and innovation requires the integration of these tenets.
A challange that companies faces?
Designing new products and getting them to market quickly Companies continuously bring new products to market as customer needs and wants change. Product design is integral to the success of many companies and differs significantly depending on the industry
In todays world…
companies often outsource major functions (such as product design) rather than support these functions in-house. Companies that specialize in designing and manufacturing products for other companies have become very successful
What is a contract manufacturer?
The producing companies are called contract manufacturers, and they have become successful in industries such as electronic products, clothing, drugs, plastics, and custom manufacturing. A simple definition of a contract manufacturer is an organization that performs manufacturing and/or purchasing needed to produce a product or device not for itself, but as a service to another firm.
For example, in the automobile industry, contract manufacturers produce many of the parts and subassemblies, such as the seats and other interior parts, the headlight and taillight assemblies, and the electronic equipment such as radio/CD and GPS navigation systems. The actual automobiles are often built regionally in the countries where the products will be sold to reduce transportation cost and manage currency exchange risk.
Given the potential advantages of using contract manufacturers for producing products and employing specialized design firms for designing their products, a firm must decide what its core competency should be. What is a core competency?
A company’s core competency is the one thing that it can do better than its competitors. A core competency can be anything from product design to sustained dedication of a firm’s employees. The goal is to have a core competency that yields a long-term competitive advantage to the company.
As an example, consider Honda’s expertise in engines. Honda has been able to exploit this core competency to develop a variety of quality products, from lawn mowers and snow blowers to trucks and automobiles. To take another example from the automotive industry, it has been claimed that Volvo’s core competency is safety.
What are the characteristics of a core competency?
- It provides potential access to a wide variety of markets.
- It increases perceived customer benefits.
- It is hard for competitors to imitate.
Which are the 6 phases for generic product development according to the book?
Phase 0: Planning. Phase 1: Concept development Phase 2: System-level desig Phase 3: Detail design. Phase 4: Testing and refinement Phase 5: Production ramp-up
Executing this development process within a firm is often organized using project management techniques.
What is quality function deployment?
A process that helps a company determine the product characteristics important to the consumer and to evaluate its own product in relation to others.
Another way to consider customers in designing products is by analyzing the “value” they see in the end product. Because it is so important that value be designed into products, What is value analysis?
The purpose of value analysis/value engineering (VA/VE) is to simplify products and processes. Its objective is to achieve equivalent or better performance at a lower cost while maintaining all functional requirements defined by the customer. VA/VE does this by identifying and eliminating unnecessary cost. Technically, VA deals with products already in production and is used to analyze product specifications and requirements as shown in production documents and purchase requests. Typically, purchasing departments use VA as a cost reduction technique.
What is the meaning of “design”?
The word design has many different meanings. To some, it means the aesthetic design of a product, such as the external shape of a car or the color, texture, and shape of the casing of a can opener. In another sense, design can mean establishing the basic parameters of a system. For example, before considering any details, the design of a power plant might mean establishing the characteristics of the various units such as generators, pumps, boilers, connecting pipes, and so forth.
What is ecodesign?
The incorporation of environmental considerations into the design and development of products or services. These concerns relate to the entire life cycle, including materials, manufacturing, distribution, and the eve
Ecodesign adopts an integrated approach to the relationship between products and services and the environment on three levels:
∙ The whole life cycle of the product or service is considered. The environmental impacts of a product arise not only during its manufacturing and use or when it has become waste, but throughout its entire life cycle. It includes the extraction and transport of resources needed to manufacture the product, the manufacturing processes, distribution, use and maintenance, reuse, and the treatment of its waste.
∙ The product is considered as a system. All the elements needed to develop the product’s function (consumables, packaging, energy networks) must also be taken into account.
∙ A multicriteria approach is considered. All different environmental impacts that can be generated by a product system along its life cycle are assessed in order to avoid trade-offs between different impact categories (for example, resource depletion, greenhouse effect, and toxicity).
