VEL TECH HIGH TECH DR.RANGARAJAN DR.

SAKUNTHALA ENGINEERING COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

OMF551- PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPEMENT

UNIT I: INTRODUCTION

Need for IPPD-Strategic importance of Product development – integration of customer,

designer, material supplier and process planner, Competitor and customer - Behaviour
analysis. Understanding customer-promoting customer understanding-involve customer in
development and managing requirements - Organization process management and
improvement

INTEGRATED PRODUCT AND PROCESS DEVELOPMENT (IPPD)

 Integrated product and process development combines the product design processes
along with the process design process to create a new standard for producing
competitive and high-quality products.
 Integration of new technologies and methods provide a complete new dimension to
product design process. This process starts with defining of the requirements of
products based on the customer feedback while considering the design layout and
other constraints.
 With integration of production method and technology with product design, it is
natural for integration of product design and process design.
 Therefore, integrated product and process development can be defined as a process
starting from product idea to development of final product through modern
technology and process management practices while minimizing cost and
maximizing efficiency.

Advantages of Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD)

Organization stands to benefit greatly from the implementation of IPPD. Some of the
advantages are as follows:

 Using modern technologies and implement logical steps in production design, the
actual production is likely to come down, thereby reducing product delivery time.
 Through optimum usage of resources and using efficient process, organizations are able
to minimize cost of production thus improving profitability of the organization.
 Since extensive uses of CAD model are employed chances are of product or design
failure are greatly reduced thus reducing risk for organization.
 As the focus is solely in delivering value to customer, quality is paramount importance
and achieved through technology and methods.

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Key Factors for IPPD

There are certain factors, which can vastly improve IPPD. These factors are as follows:

 IPPD success is greatly dependent on agreement on the end objective which is the
successful address to customer requirements. All the stakeholders and management
should be aligned to the single objective.
 Since this is a scientific approach, its success dependent on building up of plan,
implementation of plan and constant review of the implemented plan.
 With implementation of modern methods and technology comes usage of modern tools
and systems. This tools, and systems need to be integrated within the organization
framework.
 Skilled manpower is another essential; therefore, organization need to make investment
in human capital.
 Customer is the focal point of IPPD. Therefore, constant feedback from them is
essential for IPPD to be a success.
 Therefore, IPPD is approach design to address all the concern of modern organization
in the globalized world.

Five principles of IPPD

1. Customer Focus:
 It’s accomplished by including the customer in decision making and on
multidisciplinary teams.
 Conducting tradeoff studies during the requirements definition and development
processes also ensures that the design remains consistent with customer needs..

2. Concurrent Development of Products and Processes:

 It refers to the simultaneous development of the deliverable product and all of the
processes necessary to make the product (development processes) and to make that
product work (deliverable processes).
 These processes can significantly influence both the acquisition and life-cycle cost
of the product.

3. Early and Continuous Life-Cycle Planning:

 It’s accomplished by having stakeholders, representing all aspects of a product’s
life-cycle, as part of the IPT.
 Early life-cycle planning with customers, functional representatives, and suppliers
lays a solid foundation for the various phases of a product and its processes.
 Early emphasis on life-cycle planning ensures the delivery of a system that will be
functional, affordable, and supportable throughout a product’s life cycle.

4. Proactive Identification and Management of Risk:

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  It’s accomplished in many ways in the IPPD environment.
 By using the IPT teamwork approach, designers, manufacturers, testers and
customers work together to ensure that the product satisfies customer needs.
 IPPD is key to an organized, comprehensive, and iterative approach for identifying
and analyzing cost, technical, and schedule risks and instituting risk-handling
options to control critical risk areas.
 IPTs develop technical and business performance measurement plans with
appropriate metrics to monitor the effectiveness and degree of anticipated and
actual achievement of technical and business parameters.

5. Maximum Flexibility for Optimization and Use of Contractor Approaches:

 IPPD is a management approach, not a specific set of steps to be followed.
 The Government acquisition community recognizes that it must allow contractors
the flexibility to use innovative, streamlined best practices when applicable
throughout the program.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

• Product quality: How good is the product resulting from the development effort? Does
it satisfy customer needs? Is it robust and reliable? Product quality is ultimately reflected in market
share and the price that customers are willing to pay.
• Product cost: What is the manufacturing cost of the product? This cost includes spending
on capital equipment and tooling as well as the incremental cost of producing each unit of the
product. Product cost determines how much profit accrues to the firm for a particular sales volume
and a particular sales price.
• Development time: How quickly did the team complete the product development effort?
Development time determines how responsive the firm can be to competitive forces and to
technological developments, as well as how quickly the firm receives the economic returns from
the team’s efforts.
• Development cost: How much did the firm have to spend to develop the product?
Development cost is usually a significant fraction of the investment required to achieve the profits.
• Development capability: Are the team and the firm better able to develop future products
as a result of their experience with a product development project? Development capability is an
asset the firm can use to develop products more effectively and economically in the future.

THE CHALLENGES OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Developing great products is hard. Few companies are highly successful more than half the
time. These odds present a significant challenge for a product development team. Some of the
characteristics that make product development challenging are:
• Trade-offs: An airplane can be made lighter, but this action will probably increase
manufacturing cost. One of the most difficult aspects of product development is recognizing,
understanding, and managing such trade-offs in a way that maximizes the success of the product.

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 • Dynamics: Technologies improve, customer preferences evolve, competitors introduce
new products, and the macroeconomic environment shifts. Decision making in an environment of
constant change is a formidable task.
• Details: The choice between using screws or snap-fits on the enclosure of a computer can
have economic implications of millions of dollars. Developing a product of even modest
complexity may require thousands of such decisions.
• Time pressure: Any one of these difficulties would be easily manageable by itself given
plenty of time, but product development decisions must usually be made quickly and without
complete information.
• Economics: Developing, producing, and marketing a new product requires a large
investment. To earn a reasonable return on this investment, the resulting product must be both
appealing to customers and relatively inexpensive to produce. For many people, product
development is interesting precisely because it is challenging. For others, several intrinsic
attributes also contribute to its appeal:
• Creation: The product development process begins with an idea and ends with the
production of a physical artifact. When viewed both in its entirety and at the level of individual
activities, the product development process is intensely creative.
• Satisfaction of societal and individual needs: All products are aimed at satisfying needs
of some kind. Individuals interested in developing new products can almost always find
institutional settings in which they can develop products satisfying what they consider to be
important needs.
• Team diversity: Successful development requires many different skills and talents. As a
result, development teams involve people with a wide range of different training, experience,
perspectives, and personalities.
• Team spirit: Product development teams are often highly motivated, cooperative groups.
The team members may be co-located so they can focus their collective energy on creating the
product. This situation can result in lasting camaraderie among team members.

STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

 Strategies are plans to achieve goal

 Goals are thought as destinations strategies are the roadmaps fro achieving those
destinations
 Strategies provides focus for decision making.
 The overall strategies of organizations are knoen as corporate strategies
 Product strategy is a long range functional strategy or an action plan fro the roduction of
company’s product/service.
 Product strategy is a long range functional strategy o an action plan for the production of
company’s product/service
 It provides a road map for what the production or operation functions must do to achive
the business strategies
 Some decisions included in operation are
 What new product or services must be developed and when they must be introduced
into production and market

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  What new facilities are needed and when they are needed
 What new technologies and process must be developed and when they are need
 What production schemes will be followed to produce product/services.

INTEGRATION OF CUSTOMER

 Customer integration is the component of customer relationship management

which puts technology in place that allows customers to process their own
transactions and to have direct contact with the organization. This means that the
need for middlemen is reduced.
 It is a way for the organization to do business with substantial savings on human
resources.

Motivation of integration
 Price and quality of service have become negligible differentiators for
companies in the communications, media and entertainment industries (e.g.,
wireline, wireless, broadband cable, and satellite service providers).
 The customer experience is emerging as the primary way service providers
can stand apart from competitors.
 The goal of integrated customer management is to align people, processes
and technology to enable service providers to deliver the customer
experience they intend, rather than having the experience happen as an
unplanned result.

Principles of Customer integration

1) Alignment
 All people, processes and systems must be aligned to meet both business goals and
customers desires. For example, bundling products is a good example of an
initiative that crosses lines of business and/or departments.
 The product development, marketing and sales departments for local and long
distance, wireless and data services must work in conjunction to enable the
company to assemble and sell bundled services.
 Alignment allows customers to perceive and interact with their service providers as
one company, not as disparate lines of business.
2) Agility
 Service providers must be able to quickly and efficiently react to
changing market conditions and customer demands.

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  Entering new businesses or bringing new products to market quickly and cost-
effectively is critical and is often a key differentiator between large organizations and
their newer, more nimble niche players
 Agile organizations can change direction when it makes sense for them to do so—or
when their customers demand it—without being hampered by organizational
stovepipes, or by inflexible business processes or IT infrastructure.
3) Customer-centricity
 The customer experience was primarily a by-product of internally focused processes
designed to achieve the desired result (market or activate a service, generate a bill, enable
customer service) efficiently and cost-effectively.
 Customers demand that their experience be simple and, optimally, create value for them.
Therefore, service providers must put the customer at the center of their business.
Customer-centricity means making the business easier for customers to do business with.
 It also involves understanding customers’ needs and desires and mapping processes and
resources to meet them.
INTEGRATION DESIGNER
 Integration Designer solves the key problem today of integrating data and
applications to create technical solutions for complex business processes.
 To understand how to use Integration Designer, you must understand the product's
architecture and features.

1) Team development in Business Automation Workflow

IBM Business Automation Workflow provides tools to help teams share
resources and collaborate effectively.
2) Service-oriented architecture
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a loosely-defined industry standard
that presents all business processes in a service-oriented way.
Dependencies among services such as web services, Enterprise Information
System (EIS) service assets, workflows, and databases are minimized and
implementation of any service is hidden.
3) Service Component Architecture (SCA)
Service Component Architecture enables a service oriented architecture and
is made available by many corporations including IBM.

4) Deployment options for Integration Designer

In Integration Designer you can deploy applications in two ways. The
method you select depends on whether you use IBM Workflow Center with IBM
Integration Designer.
5) The runtime environments for IBM Integration Designer
Integration Designer can be used to create applications that can be run
in IBM Workflow Server
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 6) Task flows
Task flows are used to learn about and perform tasks in Integration
Designer in an interactive manner. When you use learning task flows, you can
learn key concepts; when you use creating task flows, you can learn how to
perform key tasks.

MATERIAL SUPPLIER

Integrated Suppliers is a concept for improving the part of the supply chain between
manufacturers and their tiers of suppliers of ingredients, raw materials and packaging.

PROCESS PLANNER

Planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve a desired goal.
It is the first and foremost activity to achieve desired results.

Major characteristics of planning in organizations include:

 Planning increases the efficiency of an organization.

 Planning reduces risks.
 Planning utilizes with maximum efficiency the available time and resources
The concept of planning in organizations involves identifying
What an organization wants to do by using four questions:
 Where are we today in terms of our business or strategy planning?
 Where are we going?
 Where do we want to go?
 How are we going to get there?

Types of planning
The three main types of process planning.

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 1. Manual Process Planning - This type of planning is known as man-variant
process planning and is the commonest type of planning used for production
today
2. Automated Process Planning -A completely automated process planning
system would eliminate all human effort between the preparation of an
engineering drawing and a complete process plan for every manufacturing
operation.
3. Generative Process Planning-Generative process planning may be
defined as a system that synthesizes process information in order to create
a process plan for a new component automatically.

COMPETITORS

 Identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their

strengths and weaknesses relative to those of your own product or service.
 A competitive analysis is a critical part of your company marketing plan.
 The steps may include:
 Define the industry – scope and nature of the industry.
 Determine who the competitors are.
 Determine who the customers are and what benefits they expect.
 Determine the key strengths – for example price, service, convenience,
inventory, etc.
 Rank the key success factors by giving each one a weighting – The sum of
all the weightings must add up to one.
 Rate each competitor on each of the key success factors.
 Multiply each cell in the matrix by the factor weighting.

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

 Behavior Analysis is the scientific study of the principles of learning and

behavior.

 This field of science is concerned with describing, understanding,

predicting, and changing behavior.

 They seek answers by looking at the biological and environmental factors,

although they are primarily interested in the role of environment in behavior
change.

 There are three main branches to the field:

 Conceptual Behavior Analysis: The Conceptual branch focuses on

the philosophical, theoretical, historical, and methodological issues
that underlie the field.

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  Experimental Behavior Analysis: Experimental Behavior Analysis
involves basic research intended to add to the body of knowledge
about phenomena that control and influence behavior

 Applied Behavior Analysis. It focuses on the application of the

principles of behavior to the needs of individuals to promote
behavior change and improve quality of life

THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The six phases of the generic development process are:

0. Planning: The planning activity is often referred to as “phase zero” because it
precedes the project approval and launch of the actual product development process. This
phase begins with opportunity identification guided by corporate strategy and includes
assessment of technology developments and market objectives.
The output of the planning phase is the project mission statement, which specifies
the target market for the product, business goals, key assumptions, and constraints.

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.

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

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 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 postlaunch 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.

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CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT: THE FRONT-END PROCESS

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 The concept development process includes the following activities:
• 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 many or all of the needs.

`• Establishing target specifications: Specifications provide a precise description of what

a 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.
Later these specifications are refined to be consistent with the constraints imposed by the team’s
choice of a product concept. The output of this stage is a list of target specifications. Each
specification consists of a metric, and marginal and ideal values for that metric.

• Concept generation: The goal of concept generation is to thoroughly explore the space
of product concepts that may address the customer needs. Concept generation includes a mix 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.

• Concept selection: Concept selection is the activity in which various product concepts
are analyzed and sequentially eliminated to identify the most promising concept(s). The process
usually requires several iterations and may initiate additional concept generation and refinement.

• Concept testing: One or more concepts are then tested to verify that the customer needs
have been met, assess the market potential of the product, and identify any shortcomings that must
be remedied during further development. If the customer response is poor, the development project
may be terminated or some earlier activities may be repeated as necessary.

• Setting final specifications: The target specifications set earlier in the process are
revisited after a concept has been selected and tested. 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.

• Project planning: In this final activity of concept development, 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 front-end activities can be
usefully captured in a contract book, which 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. The contract book serves to
document the agreement (contract) between the team and the senior management of the enterprise.

• 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 between, for example, development costs
and manufacturing costs. Economic analysis is shown as one of the ongoing activities in the

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concept development phase. An early economic analysis will almost always be performed before
the project even begins, and this analysis is updated as more information becomes available.

• Benchmarking of competitive products: 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. Competitive benchmarking is performed in support of
many of the front-end activities.

• Modeling and prototyping: Every stage of the concept development process involves
various forms of models and prototypes. These may include, among others: early “proof of-
concept” models, which help the development team to demonstrate feasibility; “formonly” models,
which can be shown to customers to evaluate ergonomics and style; spreadsheet models of
technical trade-offs; and experimental test models, which can be used to set design parameters for
robust performance.

ADAPTING THE GENERIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

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UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER

 We have to create a high-quality information channel that runs directly between

customers in the target market and the developers of the product.
 Those who directly control the details of the product, including the engineers and
industrial designers, must interact with customers and experience the use
environment of the product.
 The process of identifying customer needs is an integral part of the larger product
development process and is most closely related to concept generation, concept
selection, competitive benchmarking, and the establishment of product
specifications.

 Needs are largely independent of any particular product we might develop; they are
not specific to the concept we eventually choose to pursue.
 A team should be able to identify customer needs without knowing if or how it will
eventually address those needs.
 On the other hand, specifications do depend on the concept we select.
 The specifications for the product we finally choose to develop will depend on what
is technically and economically feasible and on what our competitors offer in the
marketplace, as well as on customer needs.
 Identifying customer needs is itself a process, for which we present a five-step
method
 The five steps are:

1. Gather raw data from customers.

2. Interpret the raw data in terms of customer needs.
3. Organize the needs into a hierarchy of primary, secondary, and (if necessary)
tertiary needs.
4. Establish the relative importance of the needs.
5. Reflect on the results and the process.

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Step 1: Gather Raw Data from Customers

Gathering data involves contact with customers and experience with the use environment
of the product. Three methods are commonly used:
1. Interviews: One or more development team members discusses needs
with a single customer. Interviews are usually conducted in the
customer’s environment and typically last one to two hours.
2. Focus groups: A moderator facilitates a two-hour discussion with a
group of 8 to 12 customers. Focus groups are typically conducted in a
special room equipped with a two-way mirror allowing several
members of the development team to observe the group.
3. Observing the product in use: Watching customers use an existing
product or perform a task for which a new product is intended can reveal
important details about customer needs. For example, a customer
painting a house may use a screwdriver to open paint cans in addition to
driving screws. Team members observe the product in the actual use
environment.

Choosing Customers

 Needs can be identified more efficiently by interviewing lead users and/or extreme
users.
 The choice of which customers to interview is complicated when several different
groups of people can be considered “the customer.”
 For many products, one person (the buyer) makes the buying decision and another
person (the user) actually uses the product.
 A good approach is to gather data from the end user of the product in all situations,
and in cases where other types of customers and stakeholders are clearly important,
to gather data from these people as well.
 A customer selection matrix is useful for planning exploration of both market and
customer variety

The Art of Eliciting Customer Needs Data

 Gathering needs data is very different from a sales call: the goal is to elicit an
honest expression of needs, not to convince a customer of what he or she needs.
In most cases customer interactions will be verbal; interviewers ask questions and
the customer responds.
Here are some general hints for effective interaction with customers:

• Go with the flow. If the customer is providing useful information, do not worry about
conforming to the interview guide. The goal is to gather important data on customer needs, not to
complete the interview guide in the allotted time.

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 • Use visual stimuli and props. Bring a collection of existing and competitors’ products,
or even products that are tangentially related to the product under development. At the end of a
session, the interviewers might even show some preliminary product concepts to get customers’
early reactions to various approaches.

• Suppress preconceived hypotheses about the product technology. Frequently customers

will make assumptions about the product concept they expect would meet their needs. In these
situations, the interviewers should avoid biasing the discussion with assumptions about how the
product will eventually be designed or produced. When customers mention specific technologies
or product features, the interviewer should probe for the underlying need the customer believes the
suggested solution would satisfy.

• Have the customer demonstrate the product and/or typical tasks related to the product.
If the interview is conducted in the use environment, a demonstration is usually convenient and
invariably reveals new information.

• Be alert for surprises and the expression of latent needs. If a customer mentions
something surprising, pursue the lead with follow-up questions. Frequently, an unexpected line of
questioning will reveal latent needs—important dimensions of the customers’ needs that are
neither fulfilled nor commonly articulated and understood.

• Watch for nonverbal information. The process described in the chapter is aimed at
developing better physical products. Unfortunately, words are not always the best way to
communicate needs related to the physical world. This is particularly true of needs involving the
human dimensions of the product, such as comfort, image, or style. The development team must
be constantly aware of the nonverbal messages provided by customers. What are their facial
expressions? How do they hold competitors’ products?

Documenting Interactions with Customers

Four methods are commonly used for documenting interactions with customers:
1. Audio recording: Making an audio recording of the interview is very easy.
Unfortunately, transcribing the recording into text is very time consuming, and hiring someone to
do it can be expensive. Also, audio recording has the disadvantage of being intimidating to some
customers.

2. Notes: Handwritten notes are the most common method of documenting an interview.
Designating one person as the primary note taker allows the other person to concentrate on
effective questioning. The note taker should strive to capture some of the wording of every
customer statement verbatim. These notes, if transcribed immediately after the interview, can be
used to create a description of the interview that is very close to an actual transcript. This debriefing
immediately after the interview also facilitates sharing of insights between the interviewers.

3. Video recording: Video recording is almost always used to document a focus group
session. It is also very useful for documenting observations of the customer in the use environment
and/or using existing products. The video recording is useful for bringing new team members “up
to speed” and is also useful as raw material for presentations to upper management. Multiple

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viewings of video recordings of customers in action often facilitate the identification of latent
customer needs. Video recording is also useful for capturing many aspects of the end user’s
environment.

4. Still photography: Taking photographs provides many of the benefits of video

recording, but is usually less intrusive and therefore easier to do while observing customers in the
field. Additional advantages of still photography are ease of display of the photos, excellent image
quality, and readily available equipment. The primary disadvantage is the relative inability to
record dynamic information.

Step 2. Interpret Raw Data in Terms of Customer Needs

Customer needs are expressed as written statements and are the result of interpreting the
need underlying the raw data gathered from the customers. Each statement or observation may be
translated into any number of customer needs.

There are five guidelines for writing customer need statements.

1. Express the need in terms of what the product has to do, not in terms of how it might
do it. Customers often express their preferences by describing a solution concept or an
implementation approach; however, the need statement should be expressed in terms
independent of a particular technological solution.
2. Express the need as specifically as the raw data. Needs can be expressed at many
different levels of detail. To avoid loss of information, express the need at the same level
of detail as the raw data.
3. Use positive, not negative, phrasing. Subsequent translation of a need into a product
specification is easier if the need is expressed as a positive statement.
4. Express the need as an attribute of the product. Wording needs as statements about the
product ensures consistency and facilitates subsequent translation into product
specifications.
5. Avoid the words must and should. The words must and should imply a level of
importance for the need.

Step 3 Organize the Needs into a Hierarchy

 The goal of step 3 is to organize these needs into a hierarchical list. The list will
typically consist of a set of primary needs, each one of which will be further
characterized by a set of secondary needs.
 In cases of very complex products, the secondary needs may be broken down into
tertiary needs as well.
 The primary needs are the most general needs, while the secondary and tertiary
needs express needs in more detail.
 The procedure for organizing the needs into a hierarchical list is intuitive, and many
teams can successfully complete the task without detailed instructions

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 1. Print or write each need statement on a separate card or self-stick note. A print macro
can be easily written to print the need statements directly from the data template.

2. Eliminate redundant statements. Those cards expressing redundant need statements can
be stapled together and treated as a single card. Be careful to consolidate only those
statements that are identical in meaning

3. Group the cards according to the similarity of the needs they express: At this point,
the team should attempt to create groups of roughly three to seven cards that express similar
needs. The logic by which groups are created deserves special attention.

4. For each group, choose a label. The label is itself a statement of need that generalizes all
of the needs in the group. It can be selected from one of the needs in the group, or the team
can write a new need statement

5. Consider creating super groups consisting of two to five groups: If there are fewer
than 20 groups, then a two-level hierarchy is probably sufficient to organize the data. In
this case, the group labels are primary needs and the group members are secondary needs.
However, if there are more than 20 groups, the team may consider creating super groups,
and therefore a third level in the hierarchy. The process of creating super groups is identical
to the process of creating groups.

6. Review and edit the organized needs statements. There is no single correct arrangement
of needs in a hierarchy. At this point, the team may wish to consider alternative groupings
or labels and may engage another group to suggest alternative arrangements.

Step 4: Establish the Relative Importance of the Needs

 The team should at this point have developed a rapport with a group of customers.
These same customers can be surveyed to rate the relative importance of the needs
that have been identified. The survey can be done in person, by telephone, via the
Internet, or by mail

Step 5: Reflect on the Results and the Process

 The final step in the method is to reflect on the results and the process. While the
process of identifying customer needs can be usefully structured, it is not an exact
science. The team must challenge its results to verify that they are consistent with
the knowledge and intuition the team has developed through many hours of
interaction with customers.

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PROCESS MANAGEMENT AND IMPROVEMENT

 Process Management can be defined as a method used to capture, manage and

analyze an organization’s business processes in order to allow for a standardized
way of working that can be organized and shared throughout an organization.

 There is also an improvement component, but this is sometimes viewed separately

from PM and offered as a separate service to customers due to the increased
complexity of going from process management to process improvement.

Management

 Process Management System, for instance, can be used to house an organisations

important documents in the form of Process maps.
 These process maps can be viewed in a simple, visual way that allows employees
to carry out the steps of a particular task more efficiently.
 With a system that is shared throughout the company, housing process maps that
have captured a task accurately, this then creates a standard way of working across
the entire organization.

Improvement

 Process Improvement is the proactive task of identifying, analyzing and improving upon
existing business processes within an organization for optimization and to meet new quotas
or standards of quality. It often involves a systematic approach which follows a specific
methodology but there are different approaches to be considered
 Process Improvement is an ongoing practice and should always be followed up with the
analysis of tangible areas of improvement.
 When implemented successfully, the results can be measured in the enhancement of
product quality, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, increased productivity,
development of the skills of employees, efficiency and increased profit resulting in higher
and faster return on investment (ROI).
 Process improvement is a key feature of many BPM Software products.
 These products serve to automate processes that are added into the software suite.
 Once the processes are run via the software, process managers and executives can then see
where improvements are needed within the process by looking at process completion times
etc.

PLAN AND ESTABLISH PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

SPECIFICATION

 The term product specifications to mean the precise description of what the product
has to do.

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  Some firms use the terms “product requirements” or “engineering characteristics”
in this way.
 A specification (singular) consists of a metric and a value.
 For example, “average time to assemble” is a metric, while “less than 75 seconds”
is the value of this metric. Values are always labeled with the appropriate units

A Product Design Specification (PDS)

 Is a documented statement of what the product is to do

 Is a living document, but defined early
 Is driven by customer needs ◦ Shows what you are trying to achieve

When Are Specifications Established?

 In an ideal world, the team would establish the product specifications once early in
the development process and then proceed to design and engineer the product to
exactly meet those specifications.
 Immediately after identifying the customer needs, the team sets target
specifications.
 These specifications represent the hopes and aspirations of the team, but they are
established before the team knows what constraints the product technology will
place on what can be achieved.
 To set the final specifications, the team must frequently make hard trade-offs
among different desirable characteristics of the product.

ESTABLISHING TARGET SPECIFICATIONS

The target specifications are established after the customer needs have been identified but
before product concepts have been generated and the most promising one(s) selected.

The process of establishing the target specifications contains four steps:

1. Prepare the list of metrics.

2. Collect competitive benchmarking information.

3. Set ideal and marginally acceptable target values.

4. Reflect on the results and the process\

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Step 1: Prepare the List of Metrics

 The most useful metrics are those that reflect as directly as possible the degree to
which the product satisfies the customer needs.
 The relationship between needs and metrics is central to the entire concept of
specifications.
 A good way to generate the list of metrics is to contemplate each need in turn and
to consider what precise, measurable characteristic of the product will reflect the
degree to which the product satisfies that need.
 In the ideal case, there is one and only one metric for each need. In practice, this is
frequently not possible.
 The rows of the matrix correspond to the customer needs, and the columns of the
matrix correspond to the metrics.
 A mark in a cell of the matrix means that the need and the metric associated with
the cell are related; performance relative to the metric will influence the degree to
which the product satisfies the customer need.

A few guidelines should be considered when constructing the list of metrics

1) Metrics should be complete.

Ideally each customer need would correspond to single metric, and the value
of that metric would correlate perfectly with satisfaction of that need.

2) Metrics should be dependent, not independent, variables.

This guideline is a variant of the what-not-how principle As do customer

needs, specifications also indicate what the product must do, but not how the
specifications will be achieved. Designers use many types of variables in product
development; some are dependent.

3) Metrics should be practical metrics

Metrics will be directly observable or analyzable properties of the product

that can be easily evaluated by the team.

4) Some needs cannot easily be translated into quantifiable metrics.

The need that the suspension instills pride may be quite critical to success
in the fashion-conscious mountain bike market, but how can pride be quantified?
In these cases, the team simply repeats the need statement as a specification and
notes that the metric is subjective and would be evaluated by a panel of customers.

5) The metrics should include the popular criteria for comparison in the
marketplace.

Many customers in various markets buy products based on independently

published evaluations.
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 Such evaluations are found, for example, in Popular Science, Consumer
Reports, on various Internet sites, or, in our case, in Bicycling and Mountain Bike
magazines.

If the team knows that its product will be evaluated by the trade media and
knows what the evaluation criteria will be, then it should include metrics
corresponding to these criteria

Step 2: Collect Competitive Benchmarking Information

 The benchmarking chart is conceptually very simple. For each competitive product,
the values of the metrics are simply entered down a column
 .Gathering these data can be very time consuming, involving (at the least)
purchasing, testing, disassembling, and estimating the production costs of the most
important competitive products.
 However, this investment of time is essential, as no product development team can
expect to succeed without having this type of information.

Step 3: Set Ideal and Marginally Acceptable Target Values

 In this step, the team synthesizes the available information in order to actually set
the target values for the metrics.
 Two types of target value are useful: an ideal value and a marginally acceptable
value. The ideal value is the best result the team could hope for.
 The marginally acceptable value is the value of the metric that would just barely
make the product commercially viable.
 Both of these targets are useful in guiding the subsequent stages of concept
generation and concept selection, and for refining the specifications after the
product concept has been selected.
 There are five ways to express the values of the metrics:
 At least X: These specifications establish targets for the lower bound on a
metric, but higher is still better.
 At most X: These specifications establish targets for the upper bound on a
metric, with smaller values being better.
 Between X and Y: These specifications establish both upper and lower
bounds for the value of a metric.
 Exactly X: These specifications establish a target of a particular value of a
metric, with any deviation degrading performance.
 A set of discrete values: Some metrics will have values corresponding to
several discrete choices.

Step 4: Reflect on the Results and the Process:

 The team may require some iteration to agree on the targets. Reflection after each
iteration helps to ensure that the results are consistent with the goals of the project.
 Questions to consider include:

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  Are members of the team “gaming”?
 Are any specifications missing?
 Do the specifications reflect the characteristics that will dictate commercial
success?

SETTING THE FINAL SPECIFICATIONS

 As the team finalizes the choice of a concept and prepares for subsequent design
and development, the specifications are revisited
 Specifications that originally were only targets expressed as broad ranges of values
are now refined and made more precise.
 Finalizing the specifications is difficult because of trade-offs—inverse
relationships between two specifications that are inherent in the selected product
concept. Trade-offs frequently occur between different technical performance
metrics and almost always occur between technical performance metrics and cost
 Here, we propose a five-step process:

1. Develop technical models of the product.

2. Develop a cost model of the product.

3. Refine the specifications, making trade-offs where necessary.

4. Flow down the specifications as appropriate.

5. Reflect on the results and the process.

Step 1: Develop Technical Models of the Product

 A technical model of the product is a tool for predicting the values of the
metrics for a particular set of design decisions. the metrics, such as
attenuation, stiffness, and fatigue life.
 Ideally, the team will be able to accurately model the product analytically,
perhaps by implementing the model equations in a spreadsheet or computer
simulation.
 Such a model allows the team to predict rapidly what type of performance
can be expected from a particular choice of design variables, without costly
physical experimentation.
 In most cases, such analytical models will be available for only a small
subset of the metrics. For example, the team was able to model attenuation
analytically, based on the engineers’ knowledge of dynamic systems
Step 2: Develop a Cost Model of the Product

 The goal of this step of the process is to make sure that the product can be
produced at the target cost.
 The target cost is the manufacturing cost at which the company and its
distribution partners can make adequate profits while still offering the product
to the end customer at a competitive price.

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  For most products, the first estimates of manufacturing costs are completed by
drafting a bill of materials (a list of all the parts) and estimating a purchase price
or fabrication cost for each part.
 At this point in the development process the team does not generally know all
of the components that will be in the product, but the team nevertheless makes
an attempt to list the components it expects will be required.
 While early estimates generally focus on the cost of components, the team will
usually make a rough estimate of assembly and other manufacturing costs (e.g.,
overhead) at this point as well. Efforts to develop these early cost estimates
involve soliciting cost estimates from vendors and estimating the production
costs of the components the firm will make itself. This process is often
facilitated by a purchasing expert and a production engineer.

Step 3: Refine the Specifications, Making Trade-Offs Where Necessary

 Finalizing specifications can be accomplished in a group session in which feasible

combinations of values are determined through the use of the technical models and
then the cost implications are explored.
 In an iterative fashion, the team converges on the specifications that will most
favorably position the product relative to the competition, will best satisfy the
customer needs, and will ensure adequate profits.
 One important tool for supporting this decision-making process is the competitive
map.

Step 4: Flow down the Specifications as Appropriate

 Establishing specifications takes on additional importance and is substantially more

challenging when developing a highly complex product consisting of multiple
subsystems designed by multiple development teams.
 In such a context, specifications are used to define the development objectives of
each of the subsystems as well as for the product as a whole.
 The challenge in this case is to flow down the overall specifications to specifications
for each subsystem.
 One challenge in the flow-down process is to ensure that the subsystem
specifications in fact reflect the overall product specifications—that if
specifications for the subsystems are achieved, the overall product specifications
will be achieved.
 A second challenge is to ensure that certain specifications for different subsystems
are equally difficult to meet.
 Some overall component specifications can be established through budget
allocations.

Step 5: Reflect on the Results and the Process

 As always, the final step in the method is to reflect on the outcome and the
process. Some questions the team may want to consider are:
Is the product a winner? The product concept should allow the team to
actually set the specifications so that the product will meet the customer needs and
excel competitively. If not, then the team should return to the concept generation
and selection phase or abandon the project.
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 How much uncertainty is there in the technical and cost models? If
competitive success is dictated by metrics around which much uncertainty remains,
the team may wish to refine the technical or cost models in order to increase
confidence in meeting the specifications.

Is the concept chosen by the team best suited to the target market, or
could it be best applied in another
The selected concept may actually be too good. If the team has generated a
concept that is dramatically superior to the competitive products, it may wish to
consider employing the concept in a more demanding, and potentially more
profitable, market segment.

Should the firm initiate a formal effort to develop better technical

models of some aspect of the product’s performance for future use? Sometimes
the team will discover that it does not really understand the underlying product
technology well enough to create useful performance models. In such
circumstances, an engineering effort to develop better understanding and models
may be useful in subsequent development projects.

PART – A
Q.No Questions
1. List the need for IPPD.
2. Explain the importance of Product development.
3. Define customer focus.
4. Explain briefly concurrent development of product and process.
5. Define product strategy.
6. Describe the importance of product strategy.
7. Explain briefly the elements involved in product strategy.
8. Draw the basic process flow chart for IPPD.
9. Summarize the steps involved in customer involvement.
10. Define supplier integration.
11. Interpret the life cycle plant.
12. Infer supplier assessments.
13. List the basic steps in supplier assessments.
14. Define Product ideas.
15. Demonstrate Behavior analysis.
16. Illustrate down basic planning methods in IPPD.
17. State the benefits of IPPD.
18. Explain the Needs of organization process management.
19. Define ramp-up.
20. Select the best training method in IPPD.

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 PART – B
1. Explain the management approach in IPPD.
2. Describe the Behavior analysis.
3. Describe the product design and development process.
4. Demonstrate the promoting customer understanding.
5. Differentiate the competitor and customer in IPPD.
6. Briefly explain the organization process management and improvement in
IPPD.
7. Identify the elements of product strategy.
8. Briefly explain the strategic importance of product development.
9. Infer detail the customer focus methods.
10. Generalize the concurrent development.

11. Explain the need for integrated product design and process
development with suitable example?
12. Explain the ways of promoting customer development and managing
requirements with suitable example?
13. Define behavior analysis. Explain it with respect to competitor and
customer.
14. Explain the need for integration of customer, designer, material supplier
and process planner.

PART – C

1. Evaluate what fraction of the price of a pocket calculator is required to cover

the cost of developing the product.
2. Judge it is important to produce more eco-friendly products or to follow eco-
friendly production system.
3. Develop a type of development process suitable for successful at developing
residential Air-conditioning units.
4. Create a product-technology roadmap illustrating the availability of technologies
for a class of products you understand well, such as personal computers.

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