Product Design Words (Ch. 11-12)

Question 1

Development cycle time

Answer 1

The time elapsed from project initiation to product launch, usually measured in months or years.

Question 2

Partly parallel development process

Answer 2

A development process in which some (or all) of the development activities at least partially overlap. That is, if activity A would precede activity B in partly parallel development process, activity B might commence before activity A is complete.

Question 3

Homophily

Answer 3

The tendency for individuals to like other people whom they perceive as being similar to themselves.

Question 4

Cross-functional teams

Answer 4

Teams whose members are drawn from multiple functional areas in the firm such as R&D, marketing, manufacturing, distribution and so on.

Question 5

Social loafing

Answer 5

When an individual in a team does not exert the expected amount of effort and relies instead on the work of other team members.

Question 6

Go/kill decision points

Answer 6

Gates established in the development process where managers must evaluate whether or not to kill the project or allow it to proceed.

Question 7

Crowdsourcing

Answer 7

A distributed problem-solving model whereby a design problem or production task is presented to a group of people who voluntarily contribute their ideas and effort in exchange for compensation, essential rewards, or a combination thereof.

Question 8

Concurrent engineering

Answer 8

A design method in which stages of a product development (e.g. concept development, product design and process design) and planning for later stages of the product lifecycle (e.g. maintenance, disposal, and recycling) occur simultaneously.

Question 9

Lead users

Answer 9

Customer who face the same general needs of the marketplace but are likely to experience them months or years earlier than the rest of the market and stand to benefit disproportionately from solutions to those needs.