ME515 Integrated Product design and Prototyping

MODULE 2 Product strategies and Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Product development and design is closely linked with industrial activity and production. When a
new product is planned, the designer has to bear in mind the available resources of the plant and
the possible impact of the firm having to acquire, modify or substitute existing machines and
equipment or buy various components from other suppliers. It is therefore obvious that product
development and design is at the core of the development and growth of the production centre and
its departments. Thus, product design is one of the fundamental elements of management policy.
Eilon has emphasized the close relation between product development and production planning and
control.

PRODUCT STRATEGIES

Surveys in industry, by use of questionnaires and interaction with executives of manufacturing firms,
have revealed that there is no such common policy for all organizations to follow a product strategy
however based on the choice of strategy the designer has to design the product.

• Pricing Strategy for Product

As an example of pricing strategy, one large chain of departmental stores aims at offering
commodities to the public at a minimum price, whatever is the quality. In fact, one may be quite
sure that articles bought at these stores cannot be obtained cheaper or even at the same price
elsewhere. The company bases this policy on the assumption that the type of goods it offers need
not have a very long life and that, if sold cheaply enough, the volume of sales is likely to be very
large, so that even a very marginal profit per unit will lead to substantial gains. This strategy is
termed pricing strategy.

• Product Quality Strategy

Other manufacturers (e.g. the aircraft industry and many precision instrument makers) define their
aim as high quality, whatever be the cost. The Chairman of Bajaj Auto Ltd. has recently expressed
that for his company, product quality is the secret of success for over the last three decades. The
high quality is manifested in minimal maintenance, high reliability and ergonomic superiority of the
Bajaj scooter for Indian conditions. Similarly, LML Vespa and Kinetic Honda have been able to
capture substantial market share due to their superior product quality.

• Product Luxuriousness Strategy

In some cases, luxury and comfort are the prime considerations that cost becomes secondary, e.g.
Rolls Royce. However, in others, precision and prestige play an important part, for instance,
Mercedes, BMW and Toyota. The manufacturers of these automobiles produce luxurious models (of
course, Toyota has several popular models besides the luxury models), but the number produced is
not very large, and in spite of the high price of the finished product, the firm cannot expect to get
high profits from this line of production alone.

• Product Utility Strategy

Other automobile firms like Maruti motors aim at large volume production of a low-priced car that
will compete with more expensive models (Esteem) by having some of their successful and popular
features and innovations. Most companies, however, say they aim at striking a satisfactory balance
between very high quality and a reasonable price. Others go further and try to improve this balance
in favour of the customer, by improving quality and leaving the price unchanged or by improving
production methods and offering the same quality at a reduced price.

The Product Characteristics

The various relationships in design have already been illustrated in Fig 1. Now it can be seen how
market research starts driving the ‘design-production-consumption’ cycle. Needs analysis generates
functional requirement which in turn generates specification for product development. Apart from
the functional aspects, other aspects, termed standards of performance, e.g. cost durability,
dependability, and ergonomics, are essential inputs to product development. Production design
which considers incorporation of production into the design is another important aspect of design
and development. Aesthetics or considerations of product appearance usually enter product design
at a later stage rather than at the development stage. After the product design is complete, the
subsequent steps are prototype production and later on, batch or mass production. The next step
involves the actual selling of the product to the appropriate market. From the market, the feedback
loop too needs analysis is complete.

Fig 1
(i) Functional aspect.

When the marketing possibilities have been explored, the functional scope of the product has to be
carefully analyzed and properly defined. Sometimes, functional aspects are multiple, and usage of
the product can be left to the customer’s choice. A steam iron is a case in point. The additional
function of dampening the cloth when required, prior to or during ironing, is incorporated in the
steam iron, the main functions of which is to iron the cloth. The customer can decide whether and
when to exploit this characteristic of the apparatus. There is a trend to offer functional versatility of
the product, thereby increasing the range of applications and sometimes combining several tools in
one. A mixer, for example, allows for a large number of attachments to be added for a variety of
duties. It is labelled as a “kitchen machine” to enhance its positioning. Basically, the mixer housing
contains a power unit and a speed regulator, but it has to be so designed as to serve all the
attachments, and the customer has to decide and define for himself the functional scope to be
compatible with his needs, his taste and his pocket. Again, household power-tool sets are designed
on very much the same principle: The hand drill such as Wolf Cubmaster is the basic unit, and with
attachments it can become a table drill, a lathe, a grinder, etc. Versatility of production machinery
may quite often result in substantial savings in production shopfloor space and capital expenditure,
and this may become one of the fundamental factors affecting design policy. Another example of
versatility in design is seen in multifunctional modular office furniture designed by furniture
designers.

(ii) Operational aspect (Ergonomic considerations).

After determining the functional aspect, the operational aspect has to be considered. Not only must
the product function properly, it must be easy to handle and easy to operate. Sometimes it has to be
adaptable to various operational conditions, and very often it is subjected to varying degrees of skill
of potential operators. The designer’s problem becomes all the more critical with the rising trend for
increased versatility because this characteristic implies using basic attachments as elements for
building suitable combinations for specific purposes. This requires a certain amount of operator
intelligence and skill, which increases with the complexity of the machine. The scarcity of skill is a
constraint in this respect on the product designer. The “start” stage before the proper operation and
the “cleanup” time (including cleaning) should be carefully analyzed with respect to the expected
skill of the operator. Too often, one finds highly efficient gadgets (e.g. in the field of household
equipment) that are capable of performing an operation in a fraction of the time normally required
but which involve such complicated preparations or such lengthy cleaning and “put away”
subsequent operations, that the ratio of net machine time to overall machine time becomes too
insignificant. The beneficial features attributed to the gadget in such cases are rather debatable.
Versatility of equipment should also be analyzed in the case of multiple chucks which should be a
‘quick change chuck’. Especially, when subsequent operations are to be carried out with the aid of
different attachments, the designer should always bear in mind the time required for an operator to
perform the changeover and should ensure that the changeover time is in reasonable proportion to
the operation time.

(iii) Ease of maintenance and durability.

There are two factors closely related to the selection of materials and class of workmanship and
hence to the design of the product and the economical analysis of its cost. Quality is not always a
simple characteristic to define, but durability and dependability are two factors that often determine
quality and have to be carefully considered by the designer.

Durability is defined mainly by the length of the service life or endurance of the product under given,
working conditions, but a measure of the product capability to idle or withstand storage is also often
considered in assessing durability. Selection of good materials alone does not guarantee the
durability of a product. The actual service life of a match or a rocket motor may be rather limited,
but that does not mean that materials for these articles may be of low quality. An additional
criterion, therefore, has to be considered, that of reliability, or the capability of the product to do its
job. In the case of matches, for instance, reliability may be related to the number of sticks in a box,
and while the manufacturer is eager to reduce this number to a minimum, he need not choose the
very best raw materials to ensure that not even one match will fail. Dependability of rocket motors,
however, may be more rigidly defined, and quality materials are chosen in spite of the short active
life envisaged for them in some applications. The standard of performance and specifications of
different products should be assessed with caution.

Another aspect of durability is that of maintenance and repair. The amount of repair and preventive
maintenance required for some products is closely related to quality and design policy. This is of
particular importance when the equipment is supposed to operate continuously and when any
repair involves a loss of running time.

(iv) Aesthetic aspect.

In what way does the appearance of a product affect its design? In most cases where the functional
scope, durability and dependability have already been defined, the aesthetics aspect is mainly
concerned with moulding the final shape around the basic skeleton. This moulding of shape may
very often be severely limited in scope, and what finally emerges is sometimes termed a junctional
shape. The view that functional shape is necessarily divorced from aesthetics is well illustrated by
bridges, locomotives, or machines of the late 19th or early 20th century.

However, a study of the gradual changes in shape of these objects in the past few decades should
convince us that there has been an increasing recognition of the role of aesthetics in design. This is
perhaps partly due to man’s aesthetic taste being reconciled to accepting these objects as an
integral part, of the landscape or everyday life, thereby leading to a modification of the original
attitude that these freaks are hopelessly ugly and should be discarded.

Functional shape is a concept in its own right among designers. Those who believe in functional
shape argue that compatibility of function with shape is logical and should therefore be accentuated
and exploited, rather than covered up. A standard lamp is first and foremost a lamp and not a
butterfly, and there is nothing wrong with its looking like a lamp. This approach is illustrated in Fig 1.

In this approach, the aesthetic aspects are examined at the design stage, after all the other aspects
of the proposed product have been analyzed. In some cases, however, plastic moulding of shape
may have financial implications; for instance, when special materials have to be used or added to
those basically required from the functional point of view or when additional processes are involved.
Such cases will require careful cost analysis of the aesthetic aspects. In some cases, aesthetics is the
governing factor in design and completely dominates it. This is especially true for many consumer
goods or fashion goods. In the case of these goods, both variety and rate of design change are very
high; Arthur D. Little Inc., USA classifies such products as turbulent products. Whereas styling is a
dominant factor in product design, it is often used as a means to create demand.

In such products, appearance is the sole reason for purchase of the product. Changes in fashion and
taste, evolution of form, and the introduction of new ideas quickly replace previous designs. If the
market is turbulent and eager to discard out-dated designs in favour of new ones, styling becomes a
race against time, a race that determines the salability of the product. Eilon recommends the
following techniques to enhance aesthetic appeal in product design:

1. Use of special materials, either for the parts of the housing or as additional decorations. Notable is
the use of chromium strips, plastics, wood, glass and fabrics for the purpose.

2. Use of colour, either natural colour of the material or colour provided by paints, platings, spraying,
or even lighting. Composition and contrast of colours is of great importance to the industrial
designer in creating a design with convenient operational and aesthetic characteristics.

3. Texture supplements colour, either by appropriate treatment of the given surfaces or coatings.
Surface finish and requirements of brightness as determined by styling may in turn affect the
production processes in the finishing stages. Matt finish, mirror finish, and mottled finish are
examples of surface finish varieties which are in vogue.

4. Shape denoted by outer contours and similarity to familiar objects. Shape can be exploited to
accentuate particular features, to create a sense of spaciousness or illusions of size, richness and
dependability.

5. Use of line to break the form. It is also used for the purpose of emphasizing parts of it, or to give a
sense of continuity, graciousness and attainability.

6. Scaling the product, either to a blown-up size or to a small size (modelling). This creates novelty
and a sense of completeness. The success of styling of some popular small automobiles in Europe
may be partly due to the designer’s talent in creating a feeling of stillness having the full-size version,
with all its features.

7. Packaging, especially for small items, novelty and attractiveness of packaging are often
transferred in the mind of the customer. In extreme cases packaging may assume an appreciable
portion of the total production costs and become the centre of the design project.

Aesthetic moulding, especially when governed by selection of material, colour, texture and
sometimes even line, has great economic advantages, since great variety can be achieved at a
comparatively low cost. The basic product remains the same, and variety is obtained by finishing
processes alone. Henry Ford’s maxim that the customer may choose any colour he likes, provided it
is black, is no longer valid. Modern production control techniques allow for a vast number of
combinations of colours and textures to be offered with little difficulty. Customers are willing to pay
more for design with special aesthetic features as demanded by them. Strangely, this holds true
even for instrumentation and control panel.
Aesthetics has been fully recognized as an integral part of design, and no good designer can afford to
ignore its implications, its tools and its benefits.

THREE S’s

The three S’s refer to standardization, simplification, and specialization—three related subjects
which are at the root of any economic analysis of product design. The three S’s can be defined as
follows:

 Standardization is the process of defining and applying the “conditions” necessary to ensure
that a given range of requirements can normally be met with a minimum of variety and in a
reproducible and economic manner on the basis of the best current techniques. Reduction is
the essence of standardization: The effect of variety reduction on production and set-up
times is shown in Fig 2. It has attained so much importance that ISO 9000 system of
International Standards has now become a synonym for quality and prestige. Several
industries are aiming at achieving this standard to be able to compete globally. The reader is
advised to study special literature on Quality Management for detailed information on ISO
9000.

Fig 2. Effect of simplification and variety reduction on set-up and production cycle times.

 Simplification is the process of reducing the number of types of products within a definite
range. It is also an attempt to reduce variety.

 Specialization is the process whereby particular firms concentrate on the manufacture of a

limited number of products or types of products. Specialization often is a result of one’s aim
to monopolize the market.

The three processes are usually linked together and develop as a logical sequence. From a wide
range of requirements it is first necessary to sort out the essential features, define them, and then
work out in a scientific manner the minimum variety required to meet these essentials. This is a
process of standardization, and it is mainly an engineering process. Within a given range, whether
covered by standards or not, a process of simplification can be carried out with a view to reducing
the variety of products or materials that are produced or purchased. This is both an economic and an
engineering process, and specialization is one of its natural outcomes.
STANDARDIZATION

Standardization covers a wide field of activity. These activities include:

1. Physical dimension and tolerances of components within a defined range.

2. Rating of machines or equipment (in units of energy, temperature, current, speed, etc.).

3. Specification of physical and chemical properties of materials.

4. Methods of testing characteristics or performances.

5. Methods of installation to comply with minimum precautionary measures and convenience of use.

The first three categories relate to limitation of the number of sizes or grades and some aspects of
quality, one of the important aims being interchangeability of components or assemblies. Adherence
to standards of raw materials is one of the fundamentals of product design since any deviation from
the standards in this respect may cause a substantial increase in the cost of materials. Industry is rich
with examples in which the designer specifies “special” materials whereas the standard grades can
do just as well.

Standardization and interchangeability impose certain limitations on the designer and demand high
skill and effort in planning. It is easy enough when designing a new component to decide that no
standard really meets the special requirements of the case in hand and that a part has to be
specified.

What designers seem to forget is that one of the purposes of standards is to provide solutions to
relieve them of the task of having to solve afresh some basic problem, and thereby allow them more
time to concentrate on the broader aspects of the design.

Another prerequisite of interchangeability is the precision required in the manufacturing process in

order to obtain production within the specified tolerances. This implies that production control has
to be tightened so that any deviation from the given standards will be immediately noticed and
appropriate action can be taken to avoid the process getting out of control.

Standardization has, however, many advantages, some of which may be briefly listed now:

1. Reduction of material waste and obsolescence

2. Concentration of effort in manufacturing: hence, simplification and specialization

3. Reduction in inventories, both of materials, and semifinished and finished products

4. Reduction in book-keeping and other paper work

5. Lowering the grades of skill required in manufacture and assembly

6. Reduction in price: hence expansion of the market

7. Reduction in repair and maintenance costs.

SIMPLIFICATION

Simplification is a constant source of disagreement between the marketing department and the
production personnel. A production engineer prefers little variety, minimum set-up, and long runs
(see Fig.2). Simplification enables the production department to improve planning, achieve higher
rates of production and machine utilization, and simplify control procedures. The salesman, on the
other hand, strives to satisfy the customer by giving him a choice or by offering him the nearest to
what he wants.

The pros and cons of simplification are given below:

Pro-Simplification

Reduce inventories of materials and finished products.

Reduce investment on plant and equipment. Save storage space.

Simplify planning and production methods. Simplify inspection and control.

Reduce required technical personnel.

Reduce sales price.

Shorten or eliminate order queues.

Pro-Variety

Satisfy a wide range of demand.

Enable better contact with the market to study its tastes and requirements.

Avoid losing orders for more salable products because the customer directs all his orders to other
vendors.

Create demand.

Perhaps the last point in favour of variety deserves further clarification. Some sales people claim
that variety encourages consumption and that, especially where consumer goods are concerned, the
psychological effect of plenty creates demand. Further, market research by some firms seems to
suggest that in some cases similar products tend to capture roughly the same portion of a given
market. The prospects of increasing total demand on the one hand and the firm’s portion of the
market on the other, may have been the main causes for boosting variety to the extent found
nowadays in industry.

From the customer’s point of view, this is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs. A flood of variety
pleases the customer, who ceases in many cases to appreciate the fine distinction between similar
products and has either to make a haphazard choice or to invest effort, time and study (and quite
often money) to enable him to make an intelligent choice. This is undesirable for the firm as well.
Apart from missing all the advantages listed above, when simplification is applied, an analysis of the
market sometimes shows that variety has long exceeded the saturation point and that an increase in
variety will not even be noticed in the market.

Also, the division of the market between a large number of products (in fact, too large) makes each
portion so small that prices have to be kept at high levels to avoid losses. When a great variety
exists, a sales analysis can be made to establish the salability of the products. When the accumulated
sales income is plotted against die number of products offered for sale, it is often revealed that a
comparatively small number of products contribute substantially to the total sales (Fig.).

This is sometimes referred in industry as the “25% to 75%”

relationship because in many cases it was found that 25% of
the products brought in 75% of the income, although in some
extreme cases, studies revealed as small as 10 to 90%
relationships. This leads to unnecessary drain of the firm’s
efforts, which should be directed to promoting the more
profitable products. A more desirable situation is when
responsibility for income is more evenly distributed between
products, i.e., when the curve is “flat” as the lower curve in Fig
3. shows, which is achieved through reduction of variety

Fig 3: Effect of simplification on Pareto diagram (ABC diagram).

The Product Development Process

A process is a sequence of steps that transforms a set of inputs into a set of outputs. Most people
are familiar with the idea of physical processes, such as those used to bake a cake or to assemble an
automobile. A product development process is the sequence of steps or activities that an enterprise
employs to conceive, design, and commercialize a product.

Many of these steps and activities are intellectual and organizational rather than physical. Some
organizations define and follow a precise and detailed development process, while others may not
even be able to describe their process. Furthermore, every organization employs a process at least
slightly different from that of every other organization. In fact, the same enterprise may follow
different processes for each of several different types of development projects.

A well-defined development process is useful for the following reasons:

• Quality assurance: A development process specifies the phases a development project will pass
through and the checkpoints along the way. When these phases and checkpoints are chosen wisely,
following the development process is one way of assuring the quality of the resulting product.

• Coordination: A clearly articulated development process acts as a master plan that defines the
roles of each of the players on the development team. This plan informs the members of the team
when their contributions will be needed and with whom they will need to exchange information and
materials.
• Planning: A development process includes milestones corresponding to the completion of each
phase. The timing of these milestones anchors the schedule of the overall development project.

• Management: A development process is a benchmark for assessing the performance of an ongoing

development effort. By comparing the actual events to the established process, a manager can
identify possible problem areas.

• Improvement: The careful documentation and ongoing review of an organization‘s development

process and its results may help to identify opportunities for improvement.

The Generic Product Development Process

1. Concept development:

In the concept development phase, the needs of the target market are identified, alternative
product concepts are generated and evaluated, and one or more concepts are selected for further
development and testing. 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. This book presents several detailed methods for the concept
development phase.

2. System-level design:

The system-level design phase includes the definition of the product architecture, decomposition of
the product into subsystems and components, and preliminary design of key components. Initial
plans for the production system and final assembly are usually defined during this phase as well. The
output of this phase usually includes a geometric layout of the product, a functional specification of
each of the product‘s subsystems, and a preliminary process flow diagram for the final assembly
process.

3. Detail design:

The detail design phase includes the complete specification of the geometry, materials, and
tolerances of all of the unique parts in the product and the identification of all of 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—the drawings or computer files describing the geometry of each part and its
production tooling, the specifications of the purchased parts, and the process plans for the
fabrication and assembly of the product. Three critical issues that are best considered throughout
the product development process, but are finalized in the detail design phase, are: materials
selection, production cost, and robust performance.

4. Testing and refinement:

The testing and refinement phase involves the construction and evaluation of multiple
preproduction 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 processes to be used in
production.

Alpha prototypes are tested to determine whether the product will work as designed and whether
the product satisfies the key customer needs. Later (beta) prototypes are usually built with parts
supplied by the intended production processes 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. The goal for the beta prototypes is usually to answer
questions about performance and reliability in order to identify necessary engineering changes for
the final product.

5. Production ramp-up:

In the production ramp-up phase, the product is made using the intended production system. The
purpose of the ramp-up is to train the workforce and to work out any remaining problems in the
production processes. Products 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. At some point in this transition, the
product is launched and becomes available for widespread distribution. A post launch project review
may occur shortly after the launch. This review includes an assessment of the project from both
commercial and technical perspectives and is intended to identify ways to improve the development
process for future projects.
CONCEPT GENERATION, SELECTION AND TESTING

A concept is something more than an idea but is not yet a product. The concept is a detailed
statement of what the new product will be and what it is designed to do. At this stage of the
process, the concept must be examined in terms of the proposed product‘s strategic fit. That is, in
light of company objectives, strengths, weaknesses, resources, new product criteria, and prevailing
market and competitive conditions.

The concept generation, selection and testing phases of new product development may be thought
of as a search for the most profitable solution to a design problem.

 Concept generation:

Concept generation is an integral part of the new product development process. It is an idea of
doing a structured process to generate design concepts is one of the most difficult concepts to
teach, where the skill, experience and creativity of design team are used to generate designs which
address the identified needs of the clients and the users. Ideas are like prototypes need to be tested
to verify they fit customer and client needs.

―Thorough exploration of alternatives early in the development process greatly reduces the
likelihood that the team will stumble upon a superior concept late in the development process or
that a competitor will introduce a product with dramatically better performance than the product
under development.

The advantage of concept generation is can reduce the likelihood of costly problems later in the
development process, because in the early concept generation is a very affordable way of looking at
a lot of alternatives.

A good concept design requires the use of intuition, imagination and logic to come up with creative
solutions to the, now well-defined, problem. The main difficulty in concept design is sufficiently to
come up with original concepts.

Three concept generation methods are:

Task analysis,

Product function analysis,

Life cycle analysis.

Together these methods can be thought of as ways “force-generating‘ concepts.

Task analysis

Most products are designed to be used, in some way, by people. When examined in detail, the
product-user interface for even the simplest of products is often complex and rarely well
understood. Consequently, this aspect of product design often provides a rich source of inspiration
on concept design. Task analysis exp0lores the interaction the product and the person who uses it by
observation and analysis and then uses the results to generate new product concepts. It gives the
designer firsthand experience of how customers actually use products. Through this, it stimulates
concept generation to improve the user interface and paves the way for the subsequent application
of ergonomic or anthropometric design methods.

Product function analysis

Product function analysis is a powerful technique which can be used on its own for concept design or
used as the first step in two other design methods, value analysis and failure modes and effects
analysis. Product function analysis is a fundamentally customer-oriented technique. Throughout, it
presents the functions of the product as perceived by the customer and as ranked in importance by
the customer. For products with complex, or not properly understood customer functions, it will
have to be based on formal market research.

Life cycle analysis

This technique is used most widely by designers interested in improving the

environmentalfriendliness of new products but in principle it is applicable to design for all purposes.
By mapping out the life cycle of a product from the time it enters the factory as raw materials to the
time it is discarded after use by the customer, the designer is forced to think about how well the
product is designed for each of these life cycle stages

Concept Generation is a divergent process. There are including gather data, study information,
define and understand the problem. Besides that, observations, interviews, scenarios, benchmarking
is also included. It is focus on creativity and goes for quality.

Five concept generation processes are:

Clarify the problem,

Search externally,

Search internally,

Explore systematically,

Reflect and evaluate.

Step 1: Clarify the problem

Clarify the problem is start with the customer needs analysis and functional specs as inputs. It is
focus initial efforts on critical sub problems and decompose a complex problem into simple sub
problems if necessary.

Step 2: Search externally

There are five ways to gather information from external sources, which are lead user interviews,
expert consultation, patent searches, literature searches and competitive benchmarking.

Interview Lead Users

While identifying customer needs, the team may have sought out or encountered lead users. Lead
users are those users of a product who experience needs months or years before the majority of the
market and stand to benefit substantially from a product innovation (von Hippel, 1988). Frequently
these lead users will have already invented solutions to meet their needs. This is particularly true
among highly technical user communities, such as those in the medical or scientific fields. Lead users
may be sought out in the market for which the team is developing the new product, or they may be
found in markets for products implementing some of the sub functions of the product.

In the handheld nailer case, the nailer team consulted with the building contractors from the PBS
television series This Old House to solicit new concepts. These lead users, who are exposed to tools
from many manufacturers, made many interesting observations about the weaknesses in existing
tools, but in this case did not provide many new product concepts.

Consult Experts

Experts with knowledge of one or more of the sub problems not only can provide solution concepts
directly but also can redirect the search in a more fruitful area. Experts may include professionals at
firms manufacturing related products, professional consultants, university faculty, and technical
representatives of suppliers. These people can be found by calling university- ties, by calling
companies, and by looking up authors of articles. While finding experts can be hard work, it is almost
always less time consuming than re-creating existing knowledge.

Most experts are willing to talk on the telephone or meet in person for an hour or so without charge.
In general, consultants will expect to be paid for time they spend on a problem beyond an initial
meeting or telephone conversation. Suppliers are usually willing to provide several days of effort
without direct compensation if they anticipate that someone will use their product as a component
in a design. Of course, experts at directly competing firms are in most cases unwilling to provide
proprietary information about their product designs. A good habit to develop is to always ask people
consulted to suggest others who should be contacted. The best information often comes from
pursuing these “second generation” leads.

The nailer design team consulted dozens of experts, including a rocket fuel specialist, electric motor
researchers at MIT, and engineers from a vendor of gas springs. Most of this consultation was done
on the telephone, although the engineers from the spring vendor made two trips to visit the team,
at their company’s expense.

Search Patents

Patents are a rich and readily available source of technical information containing detailed 37
drawings and explanations of how many products work. The main disadvantage of patent searches is
that concepts found in recent patents are protected (generally for 20 years from the date of the
patent application), so there may be a royalty involved in using them; however, patents are also
useful to see what concepts are already protected and must be avoided or licensed. Concepts
contained in foreign patents without global coverage and in expired patents can be used without
payment of royalties.

Patents and Intellectual Property, for an explanation of patent rights and how to understand patent
claims. The formal indexing scheme for patents is difficult for novices to navigate. Fortunately,
several databases contain the actual text of all patents. These text databases can be searched
electronically by key words. Key word searches can be conducted efficiently with only modest
practice and are remarkably effective in finding patents relevant to a particular product. Copies of
U.S. patents including illustrations can be obtained for a nominal fee from the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office and from several suppliers. (See the Web site www.ulrich-eppinger.net for a
current list of online patent databases and suppliers of patent documents.)

A U.S. patent search in the area of nailers revealed several interesting concepts. One of the patents
described a motor-driven double-flywheel nailer. The design in this patent uses the accumulation of
rotational kinetic energy in a flywheel, which is then suddenly converted into translational energy by
a friction clutch. The energy is then delivered to the nail with a single impact of a drive pin

Step 3: Search Internally

Internal search is the use of personal and team knowledge and creativity to generate solution
concepts. This is including make analogies, wish and wonder, use related stimuli, use unrelated
stimuli, set quantitative goals, and use gallery method.

Search Internally Often called brainstorming, and based largely on the creativity methods developed
by Osborn in the 1940s, this type of search is internal in that all of the ideas to emerge from this step
are created from knowledge already in the pos- session of the team. This activity may be the most
open-ended and creative of any task in product development. We find it useful to think of internal
search as a process of retrieving a potentially useful piece of information from one’s memory and
then adapting that information to the problem at hand. This process can be carried out by
individuals working in isolation or by a group of people working together.

Five guidelines are useful for improving both individual and group internal search:

Suspend judgment.

In most aspects of daily life, success depends on an ability to quickly evaluate a set of alternatives
and take action. For example, none of us would be very productive if deciding what to wear in the
morning or what to eat for breakfast involved an extensive period of generating alternatives before
making a judgment. Because most decisions in our day-to-day lives 38 have implications of only a
few minutes or hours, we are accustomed to making decisions quickly and moving on. Concept
generation for product development is fundamentally different. We have to live with the
consequences of product concept decisions for years. As a result, suspending evaluation for the days
or weeks required to generate a large set of alternatives is critical to success. The imperative to
suspend judgment is frequently translated into the rule that during group concept generation
sessions no criticism of concepts is allowed. A better approach is for individuals perceiving
weaknesses in concepts to channel any judgmental tendencies into suggestions for improvements or
alternative concepts.

Generate a lot of ideas.

Most experts believe that the more ideas a team generates, the more likely the team is to explore
fully the solution space. Striving for quantity lowers the expectations of quality for any particular
idea and therefore may encourage people to share ideas they may otherwise view as not worth
mentioning. Further, each idea acts as a stimulus for other ideas, so a large number of ideas have
the potential to stimulate even more ideas.
 Welcome ideas that may seem infeasible.

Ideas that initially appear infeasible can often be improved, “debugged,” or “repaired” by other
members of the team. The more infeasible an idea, the more it stretches the boundaries of the
solution space and encourages the team to think of the limits of possibility. Therefore, infeasible
ideas are quite valuable and their expression should be encouraged.

Make plenty of sketches.

Spatial reasoning about physical objects can be challenging. Text and verbal language are inherently
inefficient vehicles for describing physical entities. Whether working as a group or as an individual,
abundant sketching materials should be available. Sketch quality is not so critical here; it is the
expression of the concept that matters (Yang and Cham, 2007). Moreover, adding key dimensions to
concept sketches has been shown to correlate with successful concept development (Yang, 2009).

Build sketch models.

Simple, physical models can quickly be created to express concepts using foam, clay, cardboard, 3-D
printing, and other media. Three-dimensional sketch models are particularly helpful for problems
requiring a deep understanding of form, user interface, and spatial relationships. Research on the
timing of sketch models suggests that earlier exploration using simple physical models is linked to
better design outcomes (Häggman et al., 2013). Further research found that parallel development of
multiple, alternative sketch models, rather than working on a single prototype at a time, is linked to
better concept development performance (Neeley et al., 2013).

Step 4: Explore systematically

The team should have a collection of concept fragments so they are able to managing the
exploration process. The goal of systematic exploration is to synthesize a complete solution from the
concept fragments.

Step 5: Reflect on the results and the process

Reflect on the results and the process is the process continuous improvement.

Concept Screening

The purpose of concept screening is to narrow the number of product concept quickly and to
improve the concept Pugh (1990). There are three possible outcomes resulted from the concept
screening which are superior concept, inferior concept and revised or new concept. A superior
concept is a concept that is worth considering to be further assessed, while an inferior concept
needs to be thrown out since it is not worth considering.

In straightforward, concept screening gives relative score against a known benchmark design. It is
fast because using approximate evaluation that produces several viable concepts. And is best used
when quantitative comparisons are difficult and useful for eliminating alternatives when there are
large number needs to consider.
There are six step of concept screening:

1. Prepare the selection matrix

2. Rate the concepts

3. Rank the concepts

4. Combine and improve concepts

5. Select one or more concepts

6. Reflect on the results and the process

Sample Table of a concept screening

Concept Scoring

After having a set of concept candidates consisting of superior concepts and revised or new
concepts, the concept scoring then takes place. At this stage, the product development team weighs
the relative weight of the selection criteria and evaluates each product concept with respect to each
selection criterion. The concept scores are determined by the weighted sum of the rating. The
concept with the highest score is then selected.

Means that concept scoring is used to refine the selection when there are only have a few choices. It
is weighted ranking of measurement criteria. It used when only a few alternatives are being
considered and just required quantitative comparisons of concepts. Not only that, it can be quite
subjective due to choices of weights and ranks.

There are six step of concept scoring:

1. Preparing the selection matrix

2. Rate the Concepts

3. Rank the Concepts

4. Combining and improving is similar to concept screening

5. Select one or more concepts

6. Reflect on the Results

The process screening and scoring is process filter and decides of concept generation by using
external decision, product champion, intuition, multi-voting, pros and cons, prototype and test and
decision matrices. Almost every team uses some method for decision making.

External decision is the let the customer, client, or someone else to make decide.

Product champion is an influential team member chooses the concept.

Intuition is subjective criteria are used to decide. It just chosen by its ―feel.

Multi-voting is team members vote based upon group opinion and chosen for their favourite.

Pros and Cons is the team list strengths and weaknesses and choose based on group opinions.

Prototype and test is the team builds several unit prototypes and decision is based on the test
prototype results.

Decision matrices are team rates each concept against defined selection criteria.

Concept selection

The first round of concept selection ranks the concepts in relation to a series of selection criteria
from the opportunity specification. This is done by means of a concept selection matrix in which the
concepts are arranged along one axis of the matrix and selection criteria along the other. To make
the ranking procedure simple, each concept is judged ‗better than‘ (scored as +), ‗worse than‘
(scored as -) or ‗the same as‘ (scored as 0) a reference concept. This reference concept should be
the best current competitor to the proposed new product. The outcome of the ranking process will
be a single number expressing the relative merit of each concept. From these ranks, attention
focuses on the better concepts. Now comes the concept hybridisation and generation phase.
Essentially this sets out to take all the good features from the different concepts and combine them
into a single product. At the same time the weak features should be eliminated. So, look closely at
the concepts which were strong overall but which scored – on any of the criteria.

Below are the benefits of structured concept selection:

 A customer focused approach-concepts are evaluated against customer-oriented criteria,

so the selected concept is likely to be focused on the customer.
 More competitive designs-concepts are benchmarked against best-in-class designs,
designers can push the design to match or exceed their competitors‘ performance along key
dimensions.
 Reduced development time-using a structured approach develops a common vision and
language for the design, manufacturing, industrial and project manager team.
 Better product-process coordination-respect to manufacturing criteria improves the
product‘s manufacturability and helps to match the product with the process capabilities of
the firm.
 Better group decision making-the decision is more likely to be based on objective criteria
and minimizes the likelihood that arbitrary or personal factors influence the product
concept. Documentation-the method provides its own documentation for quickly assessing
the impact of changes in the customer needs or in the available alternatives.
Concept Scoring and Screening matrices are only used on those few (less than 5) design problems
that will make a significant difference in the outcome of project. And don‘t need the formality of
concept scoring and screening for obvious design choices or those that are dictated by the preferred
solution.
There are concept selections techniques select the best concept against criteria derived from the
opportunity specification. Probably more importantly, they provide a framework for hybridising and
expanding the range of concepts generated initially. Concept selection can, therefore, comprise a
highly creative and invaluable conclusion to the concept development process.

CONCEPT TESTING

A concept testing is a search for the most profitable solution to a design problem. When allocating
resources, developers must balance the cost of testing multiple designs against the potential profits
that may result. Means that, concept testing is the attempt to predict the success of a new product
idea before it is marketed. It usually involves getting people‘s reactions to a statement describing
the basic idea of the product. As such, it is usually pass or fail, go or no go to selecting the best
among alternative concepts. The ultimate goal of concept testing is to allow companies to make
informed ―go or ―no go decisions and thus save capital, time and effort.

Concept testing may be thought as a search for the ―best design, positioning, pricing, and
manufacturing of a new product. It probably the most valuable and challenging application of
qualitative research, but how much budget should be allocated to testing new product concepts?
And how many tests should be conducted? ―Innovation through multiple product concepts
increases expected profit through the discovery of incrementally better designs, but because
concepts are costly to generate and test, the design team must balance costs and benefits to
maximize expected profits net of the cost of testing.

Concept testing is an essential tool for managers who must bring new imaging and document
technology products to market so designer need to conduct research throughout their development
effort to ensure they are developing solutions for relevant problems, understand customer
requirements, and are emphasizing valued features.

There is the concept testing process:

Step 1: Define the purpose of the concept test : Concept testing is essentially an experimental
activity, and as with any experiment, knowing the purpose of the experiment is essential to
designing an effective experimental method.

Step 2: Choose a survey population: Choose a survey population is choose the survey potential
customers from the largest segment to do the testing process.

Step 3: Choose a survey format: There are various surveys format can be carry out and it depends
partially on the situations and the environments such as by email, phone, post or direct face to face.
But it is undeniable that each of the survey format presents risks of sample bias.
Step 4: Communicate the concept: There have several way of communicate which are verbal
description, sketch, storyboard, video and simulation. The choice of the survey format is closely
linked to the way which the concept will be communicated.

Step 5: Measure customer response : Customer response will be very important because identify
customer needs because it is the first step to be carry out in new product implementation.

Step 6: Interpret the results

By using calculation, which Q = N x A x P

Where Q = sales in annual N = number of annual purchases A = awareness x availability in
fractions P = probability of purchase in surveyed

Step 7: Reflect on the results and the process : Reflect on the outcome and the process will always
be the last step and it is very important been carried out to ensure successful product development.
The product concept should allow the teams to actually set the specifications so that the product
will meet the customer needs and perform competitively.

Concept testing methods

Over the years, researchers have designed and applied many different methods of concept testing.
These methods are categorized based on how the concepts are displayed. Each of these methods is
suitable for different types of research. Concept testing is easily achieved with the help of a research
platform.

Here are the four primary methods of concept testing:

Comparison testing
Monadic testing
Sequential monadic testing
Proto-monadic testing

Comparison testing

In comparison testing, two or more concepts are presented to the respondents. The respondents
compare these concepts by using rating or ranking questions or merely asking to select the best
concept displayed. Comparison tests give clear and easily understandable results. It’s easy to
determine which concept is the winner. However, the results lack context. There is no way to tell
why the respondents choose one concept over others. It is essential to understand these details
before successfully launching a product.

Monadic testing

In a monadic test, the target audience is broken down into multiple groups. Each group gets shown
only one concept. These tests focus on analyzing a single concept in-depth. A monadic test survey is
usually short and highly targeted. Since each group of respondents sees a single concept, it is
possible to go in-depth without making the survey lengthy. Researchers can ask follow-up questions
about the various attributes of a concept, such as what they liked about the concept, it’s look and
feel, price point, etc. Though each group of respondents sees different concepts in isolation, each
concept’s follow-up questions will be the same.

Monadic test surveys are short and give researchers the flexibility to ask multiple follow-up
questions. Thus the results provide more contexts around why a specific concept is better than the
others. However, since the target audience is split into multiple groups, the sample size required to
conduct a monadic test is extensive. Since various concepts need testing, more significant is the
sample size. The increase in sample size considerably increases the cost of research.

Sequential monadic testing

Like the monadic test, in sequential monadic tests, the target audience is split into multiple groups.
However, instead of showing one concept in isolation, each group is presented with all the concepts.
The order in the concepts is randomized to avoid bias. The respondents are asked the same set of
follow-up questions for each of the concepts to get further insights.Since each group of respondents
sees all concepts, the target audience’s size required to perform a sequential monadic test is
relatively small. Multiple concepts can be tested in a single round. Thus sequential monadic tests are
more cost-effective and easy to field. This concept testing method makes it ideal for research with
budget constraints or when only a small target audience is available. However, since all the concepts
are presented to each group of respondents, the questionnaire’s length is fairly long. This affects the
completion rate and might introduce non response bias. Researchers can reduce the length of the
questionnaire by limiting the number of questions. However, this affects the depth of the collected
insights. Sequential monadic tests are also subject to other biases, such as interaction bias or order
bias.

Protomonadic testing

A protomonadic test includes a sequential monadic test followed by a comparison test. Here,
respondents first evaluate multiple concepts and then ask to choose the concept they prefer. This
design is useful to validate the results from the sequential monadic test. Researchers can verify if the
concept selected in the comparison test is compatible with the insights collected about each 52
concept. This article explains how to choose the best-suited concept testing method for research.
Once you have finalized the method you will be using; you must design a survey for conducting your
test. Creating a survey and then effectively using a block randomizer offers the best results. The
following section will discuss the guidelines and best practices for creating an effective concept
testing survey.

Concept testing survey design

Concept testing is achieved by using an online survey. The survey needs to be designed to analyze
how respondents feel about your concepts or ideas. The data collected using these surveys is then
used to determine what customers prefer or reject your idea.

Set an objective for your survey

Consistent survey design
Likert scales
Include images
Demographic questions
Experienced individuals and teams can usually just sit down and begin generating good concepts for
a sub problem. Often these people have developed a set of techniques they use to stimulate their
thinking, and these techniques have become a natural part of their problem-solving process. Novice
product development professionals may be aided by a set of hints that stimulate new ideas or
encourage relationships among ideas

The gallery method

The gallery method is a way to display a large number of concepts simultaneously for discussion.
Sketches, usually one concept to a sheet, are taped or pinned to the walls of the meeting room.
Team members circulate and look at each concept. The creator of the concept may offer
explanation, and the group sub- sequently makes suggestions for improving the concept or
spontaneously generates related concepts. This method is a good way to merge individual and group
efforts. TRIZ is popular gallery method

TRIZ (Theory of Inventive problem solving)

In the 1990s, a Russian problem-solving methodology called TRIZ (a Russian acronym for theory of
inventive problem solving) began to be disseminated in Europe and in the United States. TRIZ
Method for Problem Solving TRIZ is a Russian acronym for “Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh
Zadatch“, which translates in English as the “theory of inventive problem solving“. The methodology
is primarily useful in identifying physical working principles to solve technical problems. The key idea
underlying TRIZ is to identify a contradiction that is implicit in a problem.

TRIZ is an evolving, open-ended system for enhancing human inventiveness through:

• Systematic identification of problems and ideal solutions

• Concentrating on all the resources available, to get more out of less
• Overcoming various blocks through approaches that have worked in other disciplines

The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TIPS or TRIZ) was developed by Genrikh S. Altshuller in the
former U.S.S.R., beginning in the late 1940s (Sushkov, Mars, and Wognum 1995; Altshuller 1984;
Domb and Slocum 1998). The basis of this theory is the discovery that patterns exist in patent claims,
many of them based on the same working principles. Building on this discovery, Altshuller
collaborated with an in- formal collection of academic and industrial colleagues to study patents and
search for the patterns that exist. Hundreds of person-years were devoted to this effort, and thou-
sands to millions of patents have been studied, resulting in the insight that patents may be classified
into five categories. The first two categories were designated as "routine design," meaning that they
do not exhibit significant innovations beyond the current technology. These categories are "basic
parametric advancement" and "change or rearrangement in a configuration. The last three
categories, on the other hand, represent designs that included inventive solutions. These three
categories are

Identifying conflicts and solving them with known physical principles

Identifying new principles
Identifying new product functions and solving them with known or new principles
Based on these categories and patent studies, Altshuller observed number of trends in historical
invention. Some of the k in the context of product design, include the following key observation

 Evolution of engineering systems (products) develops according to the same

patterns, independent of the engineering discipline product domain. These patterns
may be used to predict the trend of future evolutions in a product domain. They
may also be used to direct the search for new concepts.

 Conflicts (or contradictions) are the key drivers for producti Confin. Principles for
eliminating conflicts are universal ventiunt domains. Application of these principles
implies that compromise is unacceptable.

 The systematic application of physical effects aids invention, since a particular

product team does not know all physical knowledge.

These observations lead to the structure of TIPS for solving inven tive problems. A number of
components comprise this structure For the purpose of this text, we consider three primary
components (1) laws of engineering system (product) evolution, (2) physical effects, and (3) solution
(design) principles. The laws of product evolution (nine in number) indicate universal trends of a
product's advancement over time. Physical effects, on the other hand, document the knowledge of
the physical world from many diverse fields. Design principles, in turn, are heuristic rules for
eliminating conflicts in a design task, creating a high-level concept that is a possible inventive
solution.

Using these three TIPS components, a straightforward process may be developed for generating
concepts. The process begins with a functional model. From the functional model (in addition to
benchmarks, engineering specifications, product architecture, and other data), conflicts are
identified in the design task. These conflicts are then stated as contradictions in generalized
parameters or engineering parameters, where a generalized parameter is a controllable variable or
set of variables that embody a physical effect in a product. Design principles are then applied to
suggest ways in which the conflict may be resolved. The resulting concepts are refined with known
physical effects and analogies to existing solutions. The final step is to refine the concepts, from the
principles and effects, into a concrete geometry.

Table 2, Table 2 and the relationship matrix (sample) Table 3 provide necessary data to execute this
process. Table 1 lists the 39 generalized parameters for describing product performance metrics.
Tables 2 and 3 list the TIPS design principles with corresponding definitions. The generalized
parameters and design principles are de- rived from the large quantity of patents studied as part of
TIPS. Table 4,5,6 shows a correlation matrix of generalized parameters to design principles. The rows
of the matrix represent "What should be improved" versus the columns that represent "What
deteriorates." Up to four principles are listed in each cell of the matrix according to the order of
applicability. Table 4 presents examples of products that utilize design principles to solve
engineering conflicts. These example products provide analogies for applying the principles during
product development.
Table 1

Table 2

Table 3
Table 4