ISYE 3104 Summer 2003
Chapter 5
Homework 2 Solution
Design of Goods and Services
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What is time-based competition?
Time-based competition is a competitive strategy that tries to establish its
competitive advantage on responsiveness. More specifically, a company that
competes based on time will try (i) to get new products to the market rapidly and
also (ii) respond rapidly to the emerging demand. Hence, some core competencies
required for effective time-based competition are rapid design, efficient delivery
systems, and JIT manufacturing.
2. Explain what is meant by robust design.
Robust design means that the product is designed so that small variations in
the operational settings of the various production and assembly equipment do not
adversely affect the product.
3. What is the main information encoded in a “House of Quality”?
A typical “house of quality” data structure encodes:
 The posed requirements (what the customer wants),
 Customer preferences in terms of importance ratings
 The solutions features / attributes that can satisfy the expressed requirements
(what we can do),
 The relationships between the previous two sets quantified in terms of a
“scoring” scheme,
 The relationships (synergies or adversarial effects) among the considered
solution attributes,
 Benchmarking information regarding the performance of the competition
4. What information is contained in a bill of materials?
A bill of materials lists
 the components,
 their description,
 the quantity of each required to make one unit of the product.
It also indicates the detailed product structure through the indentation
scheme adopted in the aforementioned list.
5. What is configuration management? How does it manifest itself when you ask
for service on your automobile?
Configuration management is used by every automobile manufacturer to
track all of the changes between and during a model year. To be specific about the
part that is needed the VIN (vehicle identification number) is often used. This
information allows the manufacturer to trace the particular lot in which the car was
produced, and therefore, ship out the exact type of the required spare part that fits
this particular version of the model.
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ISYE 3104 Summer 2003
Homework 2 Solution
6. How do product selection and design affect quality?
Remember that the quality of a certain product essentially expresses the
extent to which the considered artifact meets the customer expectations. Then it
should be obvious that the product selection process is instrumental for
understanding and focusing on what the customer wants, while the product design
process will ensure that the delivered product will indeed provide meet the
customer expectations by providing the right functionality in a consistent manner..
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ISYE 3104 Summer 2003
Homework 2 Solution
Problem 5.11
Problem 5.13 (6th edition)
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ISYE 3104 Summer 2003
Homework 2 Solution
Problem 5.14
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ISYE 3104 Summer 2003
CASE STUDY 2
Homework 2 Solution
REGAL MARINE
1. The concept of product life applies to Regal Marine because Regal is constantly
under pressure to introduce new products – and those products have life cycles of
relatively few years. As the video suggests, it is a matter of typically less than five
years before a boat is out of style and its life cycle terminated. This is a long life
cycle compared to a newspaper or magazine, but if you are the production manager
it seems rather short.
2. Regal Marine uses a strategy of product differentiation, which constantly introduces
new products with new innovations and new styling to stay competitive in the
luxury performance boat market.
3. The cost and time saving at Regal Marine through use of CAD is typical of the use
of CAD everywhere. It allows a variety of designs and styles to be tested vary
economically. The ratio of savings of engineering talent is about four to one. Most
importantly, it allows them to be creative economically and rapidly.
4. The payoff from CAD is not only evident in efficiency, creative designs, and styling
but by production of the code necessary for the numerical machines, such as the
machines used to make the plugs in Washington state and for those applications of
the numerical control machines at Regal Marine. CAD also provides, as a byproduct, very effective and comprehensive documentation of design variables.
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