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Introduction to the Product Development
Process
Jonathan Weaver
UDM Mechanical Engineering Department
weaverjm@udmercy.edu
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References
Karl T. Ulrich & Steven D. Eppinger: Product Design and
Development. Third Edition. McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Ullman, David G.: The Mechanical Design Process. Second Edition.
McGraw-Hill, 1997.
Pugh, Stuart: Creating Innovative Products Using Total Design.
Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1996.
Bishop and Magleby: A Review of Technology Push Product
Development Models and Processes, Proceedings of DETC’04,
DETC2004-57496.
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Big Opportunities Come From Big
Problems
• Show khosla9.mp4 (available at STVP)
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Picturephone: The Answer to a Question
Nobody Asked
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Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Intro to Product Development
A Generic Product Development Process
A Closer Look at the Concept Development Phase
IDEO as an Example
What does all of this have to do with design, innovation,
and creativity?
• Final Remarks
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Product Development
• Product:
A product is something sold by an enterprise to its
customers.
• Product Development:
Product development is the set of activities beginning with
the perception of a market opportunity and ending in the
production, sale and delivery of a product.
• Here we will focus on products which are engineered,
discrete, and physical.
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Who Designs and Develops Products?
• Product design is an interdisciplinary activity requiring
contributions from nearly all the functions of a firm
• A function (in organizational terms) is an area of
responsibility usually involving specialized education,
training, or experience
• Three functions are almost always central to a product
development project:
- Marketing
- Design
- Manufacturing
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The Challenges of Product Development
• Some of the characteristics that make product development
challenging are:
– Trade-offs
– Dynamics
– Details
– Time pressure
– Economics
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The Product Development Process
• A process is a sequence of steps that transforms a set of
inputs into a set of outputs
• A product development process is the sequence of steps or
activities that an enterprise employs to conceive, design,
and commercialize a product
• Some organizations define and follow a precise and
detailed product development process, while others may
not even be able to describe their processes
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A Generic Product Development Process
• We will consider here a generic product development
process that can be used in a market-pull situation
• The input to the process is a mission statement and the
output of the process is the product launch
• Mission statement: identifies the target market for the
product, provides a basic functional description of the
product, and specifies the business goals of the effort;
results from a well-executed product planning phase
• Product launch: occurs when the product becomes
available for purchase in the market place
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• One way to think about the product development process is
as the initial creation of a wide set of alternative product
concepts and then the subsequent narrowing of alternatives
and increasing specification of the product until the
product can be reliably and repeatably produced by the
production system
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
Mission
Statement
Product
Planning
Concept
Development
System-Level
Design
Detail
Design
Testing and
Refinement
Production
Ramp-Up
Product
Launch
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Note: Rarely does the entire process proceed in purely
sequential fashion, completing each activity before
beginning the next. In practice, many of the activities may
be overlapped in time and, at almost any stage, new
information may become available or lessons learned
which can cause a loop back or iteration. There is little
point to cluttering the process diagram with overlaps and
iterations, so we’ll use the simplified “appearing linear”
model.
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Concept development:
- The needs of the target market are identified, alternative
product concepts are generated and evaluated, and a single
concept is selected for further development
- 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
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• System-level design:
- Includes the definition of the product architecture and the
division of the product into subsystems and components
- The final assembly scheme for the production system is
usually defined during this phase
- The output of this phase is usually 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
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Detail design:
- Includes the complete specification of the geometry,
materials, and tolerances of all the unique parts in the
product and the identification of all 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
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Testing and refinement:
- Involves the construction and evaluation of multiple preproduction versions of the product
- Early (alpha) prototypes are usually built with productionintent 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
process to be used in production)
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Testing and refinement (Cont.):
- Alpha prototypes are tested to determine whether or not the
product will work as designed and whether or not the
product satisfies the key customer needs
- Later (beta) prototypes are usually built with parts supplied
by the intended production process 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
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Testing and refinement (Cont.):
- The goal of the beta prototypes is usually to answer
questions about performance and reliability in order to
identify necessary changes for the final product
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Production ramp-up:
- The product is made using the intended production system
- The purpose is to train the work force and to work out any
remaining problems in the production process
- The artifacts 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 and continuous
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A Generic Product Development Process
(Cont.)
• Production ramp-up (Cont.):
- At some point is this transition, the product is launched
and becomes available for widespread distribution.
Next a deeper look at Concept Development – arguably the
most critical stage of the process!
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Concept Development
Mission Statement
Identify
Customer
Needs
Establish
Target
Specifications
Generate
Product
Concepts
Analyze
Competitive
Products
Select a
Product
Concept
Refine
Specifications
Perform
Economic
Analysis
Plan Remaining
Development
Project
Development Plan
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Identifying customer needs:
- The goal of this activity is to understand customer’s 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 each need
- Many breakthrough innovations are the result of
addressing unarticulated customer needs detected by
careful observation of customers and anthropological
research by the developing team
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Establishing target specifications:
- Specifications are a precise description of what the 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
- The output of this stage is a list of specifications
- Each specification consists of a metric and a target
value for that metric.
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Analysis of competitive products
(competitive benchmarking):
- 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
- It is performed in support of the specifications activity as
well as in support of concept generation and concept
selection
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Concept generation:
- The goal is to explore thoroughly the space of product
concepts that may be applied to meeting the customer
needs
- It includes a mixture 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
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Concept selection:
- Is the activity in which various product concepts are
analyzed and sequentially eliminated to identify one
preferred concept
- In some cases, “proof of concept” prototypes may be
necessary to evaluate the function of various concepts
and/or “form models” may be used to evaluate customer
reaction to ergonomics and style
- The process usually requires several iterations and may
initiate additional concept generation and refinement
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Refinement of specifications:
- The target specifications set earlier in the process are
revisited after a concept has been selected
- 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
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• 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
among, for example, development costs and manufacturing
costs
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Concept Development (Cont.)
• Project planning:
- 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 concept development phase can be
usefully captured in a contract book that 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
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Adapting the Generic PDP
• The process shown so far is generic, and particular
processes will differ in accordance with a firm’s unique
context
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IDEO
• Next, let’s watch how one particular firm develops a
product, As we watch, think about the following questions:
– Does IDEO follow a structured process?
– If so, how does it compare to the generic process just
presented?
– What are the key enablers allowing IDEO to innovate?
– Note: dvd available for purchase from ABC News (the Deep Dive
Episode). A lower resolution version and can be found online; a separate
file will be posted which links to that version.
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Discussion
• What do you think of the resulting cart design?
• What does all of this have to do with design, innovation,
and creativity?
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Final Remarks
• It is extremely important to follow a structured process to
develop a new product or a new idea
• A structured process and creativity are by no means
mutually exclusive
• We have presented a generic product development process
which can be “fine tuned” for the particular types of
products that your team (or company) develops
• There are opportunities for creative, innovative solutions at
ALL phases of the product development process!
• A poor concept, flawlessly executed, will never be
competitive!