EMGT 378: New Product Planning and Development Final

What is a product concept? What specifically does the product concept describe?

A product concept is a concise description of how the product will satisfy customer needs. It describes the technology, working principles, and the form of the product.

How would you define a product development team?

A product development team is an interdisciplinary group of key individuals who exercise leadership and coordination in product development. Includes people in marketing, design, manufacturing, product planning and analysis and others.

Can you describe what is meant by a "product platform?"

A product platform is a set of common elements like underlying technical components, parts or technology, that are shared across a range of the company's products

What is the difference between a "lead user" and an "extreme user?"

Lead users: customers who experience needs months or years ahead of the majority of the market and stands to benefit substantially from product innovations Extreme users: are those who use the product in unusual ways or who have special needs

Where does Design for Manufacturing take place in the product development life cycle?

DFM begins during the concept development phase, when a product's functions and specifications are being determined. It is also involved during the system-level design phase of development when the team makes decisions on how to break up the product into individual components. This is heavy based on the expected cost and manufacturing complexity implications. DFM is also used during the detail-design phase when several decisions are driven by manufacturing concerns.

How would you define the practice of Design for Manufacturing?

DFM is aimed at reducing manufacturing costs while simultaneously improving quality, reducing development time and development cost. It is a development practice that emphasizes manufacturing issues throughout the product development process and utilizes estimates of manufacturing costs.

What are the five characteristics of a successful product development process?

1) Product quality 2) Cost 3) Development time 4) Development cost 5) Development capability

Can you describe at least four of the benefits of a well-defined development process?

1. Coordination: clearly defined roles and responsibilities of each member 2. Quality assurance: checkpoints that assure quality of product 3. Planning: milestones corresponding to completion of phases that anchors the schedule 4. Improvement: documenting and reviewing process can identify areas for improvement

What are the primary objectives of the process of Concept Selection?

1. Evaluating concepts with respect to customer needs and other criteria 2. Comparing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the concepts 3. Selecting one or more concepts for further investigation, testing, or development

What are the three critical questions you should ask in screening new product opportunities?

1. Is there a real market and a real product? 2. Can we win? Can our product be competitive? Can we succeed as a company? 3. Is it worth doing? Is the return adequate and the risk acceptable?

What are two dimensions particularly useful in characterizing technology based opportunities?

1. Knowledge of need in regards to the customers and the market 2. Knowledge of the solution in regards to the technology and solution that will likely be employed

Decisions on Product Architecture are tightly linked to several issues of importance to the entire enterprise. Can you describe at least four of these issues?

1. Product variety: range of product models the firm can produce within a particular time period in response to market demand. Products built around modular product architecture can be more easily varied without adding tremendous complexity to the manufacturing system 2. Component standardization: describes the use of the same component or chunk in multiple products. If part is standardized, then it can be manufactured at higher volumes for a lower cost. 3. Product performance: how well a product implements its intended functions. Integral architecture allows the elimination of redundancy through function sharing, which can minimize weight and maximize speed. 4. Manufacturability: architecture directly affects the ability of the team to design each chunk to be produced at low cost

Give at least 3 key benefits of using a structured approach in Concept Generation

1. Reduce likelihood of costly problems 2. Allows full exploration of the design space 3. Reduces the chance of oversight in the types of solutions considered

What are the three key variables in market forecasting?

1. The overall size of the market 2. The availability and awareness of the product 3. The fraction of the customers who are likely to purchase

Describe at least four challenges companies face in developing successful new products.

1. Trade offs between cost and function 2. Time pressure to finish products as quickly as possible to get them to market 3. Economic return on investment 4. Details of products are made quickly without understanding the consequences

What is the difference between a Screening Matrix and a Scoring Matrix in the process of selecting a concept?

A Screening Matrix evaluates initial concepts relative to a common reference concept, where as a Scoring Matrix is a more detailed analysis that involves quantitative evaluation of concepts once some have been eliminated. The Screening Matrix is used to narrow down concepts quickly and improve the concept and the Scoring Matrix is used when a better resolution is needed.

What is a Bill of Materials (BOM) and what does it include?

A bill of materials is a list of each individual components of a product. It includes a list of the raw materials, components, parts, and quantities of each needed to manufacture to create the end product. It can also have the purchase prices and manufacturing costs for each component.

What is a "technology trajectory" and how can it influence new product development?

A technological trajectory refers to the evolution of a technology. Initial performance is relatively low but it undergoes rapid growth in performance as experience with the technology increases. Then the technology approaches maturity where the technological limit is reached and it is outperformed by new technology. This influences new product development because a company must assess which point in the trajectory a technology is at and whether to keep pursuing it or to research new technologies.

What are the reasons for utilizing the following project milestone prototypes; Alpha prototypes, Beta prototypes, and Pre-production prototypes?

Alpha prototypes are used to assess whether the product works as intended. This is usually done be internal company users so that adjustments can be made before building the Beta prototype, which is typically used to assess reliability and identifying remaining areas for improvement. This prototype is typically tested by customers in the intended environment. Pre-production prototypes are used to verify that the production process capability. They are the first products produced by the entire production process and are usually tested by preferred customers.

Why does Design for Manufacturing require a cross-functional team?

DFM is an integrative process that requires several types of information, a detailed understanding of production and assembly process, and estimates of manufacturing costs, production volumes, and ramp up time. Therefore, it requires information from people in different functional groups, like engineers, cost accountants, and production personnel. A cross-functional team facilitates the integration and sharing of views that is necessary for DFM .

Explain in some detail the value of using Design of Experiments (DOE) in developing complex products?

DOE is useful in reducing the number of experiments required to achieve a Robust Product Design. This allows the team to screen many factors at the same time and discover interactions among factors while establishing and maintaining quality control. This enables the optimization of the process with minimal testing and results is a robust product.

Can you describe the process of Delayed Differentiation?

Delayed differentiation involves postponing the differentiation of a product until late in the supply chain. A company can reduce costs by partially assembling a product, transporting it, and having an inventory of the subassembly at location that is closer to the buyer. Once a product is ordered, the subassembly can be added onto the partially assembled product and shipped to the buyer. This can reduce costs because demand for particular products can vary, but demand for the basic elements (especially if it is a platform product)is more constant.

What is a Benefit (Value) Proposition?

Describes the value of the product to the customer and gives reasons why a customer would buy a product.

What do we mean by the following statement, "DFE expands the manufacturer's focus to a closed-loop life cycle?"

Designing for environment involves expanding the manufacturer's focus to consider the full product life cycle and its relationship to the environment. It is the process of reducing or eliminating the environmental impact of the product by focusing on supply chain sustainability and the use of recyclable materials from the conception phase, through the product life cycle to product and component disposal.

What is the value to an enterprise in doing Aggregate Planning?

Helps an organization make efficient use of its resources by pursuing only those projects that can be reasonably completed with the budget resources and ensures selected projects have adequate resources for successful completion

How does Economics of Scale affect the decision of how to fabricate a part?

Economies of scale describes the phenomenon that manufacturing costs of a product decreases and production volume increases. It occurs because fixed costs are divided among more units and variable costs are lower because the company can use larger and more efficient processes and equipment to manufacture the product. It affects the decision of how to fabricate a part because processes with low fixed costs and high variable costs are reasonable when few parts are made, like in machining. Processes with high fixed costs and low variable costs are reasonable when many parts are made, like injection molding. Therefore, the number of parts being produced effects how the part is fabricated.

How would you go about estimating the manufacturing costs for a new product?

Estimating manufacturing costs of new product involves drafting a bill of materials and estimating the purchase price of fabrication cost for each part.

Why is it important to generate alternative concepts early during the development cycle?

Exploration of alternative concepts early in the development process greatly reduces the likelihood that the team will stumble upon a superior concept late in the development process and reduces the likelihood that a competitor will introduce a better product.

Can you describe at least five different types of environmental impacts deriving from a product that is not environmentally designed?

Five types of environmental impacts from products that did not environmentally design are global warming, resource depletion, water pollution, air pollution and solid waste. Global warming describes the trend that the temperature of the earth is gradually increases as a result of greenhouse gases and particulates accumulating from industrial processes and products. Resource depletion refers to the fact that many raw materials used for production, like oil and iron ore, are nonrenewable and limited in supply. Water becomes polluted primarily from discharges from industrial processes, such as heavy metals and solvents. Air pollution is produced by emissions from factories, power plants, buildings and vehicles. Solid waste may be generated during a product life cycle. Some waste can be recycled but the majority is disposed of in incinerators or landfills, which can cause additional environmental impacts.

Can you explain the difference between Fixed and Variable Manufacturing Costs?

Fixed costs are those that are incurred in a predetermined amount, regardless of how many units are manufactured, like tooling costs and factory costs including capital equipment. Variable costs are those costs incurred in direct proportion to the number of units produced, which include materials and direct labor costs.

Environmental impacts of a product fall into two broad categories: energy and materials. Why is it more difficult to solve the materials problem?

For most products, addressing the energy problem means developing products that use less energy and use renewable energy, which is fairly straightforward. Addressing the material problem is not as clear cut because the material has to be capable of supporting the function of the product while being recyclable and/or not causing harm to the environment. This limits the materials that can be used and environmental impacts of certain materials are not always known.

Be able to demonstrate the concept of Functional Decomposition.

Functional decomposition involves decompose a complex problem functionally into simpler sub-problems.

A product can be described in terms of functional elements as well as physical elements. Given a product, can you draw both of these descriptions of the product?

Functional elements: the individual operations and transformations that contribute to the overall performance of the product (verbs not nouns) Physical elements the parts, components, and subassemblies that ultimately implement the products functions

What steps are included in the "Front-End Process" of product development?

Identifying customer needs, establishing target specifications, concept generation, concept selection, concept testing, setting final specifications, project detail planning, economic analysis, benchmarking competitive products, modeling and prototyping

How would you explain the concept of "Industrial Design" to one of your friends?

Industrial Design focuses on form and user interactions with the product . The professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value, and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both the user and manufacture

In performing a NPV analysis the team must include both Internal Factors and well as External Factors. What is the difference between an Internal Factor and an External Factor? Can you give some examples of each type of factor?

Internal Factors are those over which the development team has a large degree of influence. Examples of internal factors are development expenses, schedule, production cost, and product performance. External Factors are those that the team cannot arbitrarily change, like the competitive environment, or market response, sales volumes, product price

Why is it important to create a high-quality information channel from the customers to the product developers?

It ensures that those who directly control the details of the product, including the product designers, fully understand the needs of the customers and creates the ability to address latent needs.

What does a "SWOT" analysis try to accomplish?

It is a tool used to reveal internal company dynamics in terms of strengths and weaknesses and analyze external environment in terms of opportunities and threats.

Why is it important to analyze internal company direction when doing new product planning?

It is important to understand the company's mission, vision, goals, objectives, and strategy with respect to the product. This guides the research and development team to create products and allocate recourses in a way that aligns with the company's overall strategy and goals.

What is the purpose of market segmentation? Give two examples.

Market Segmentation allows the firm to consider the action of competitors and the strength of the firm's existing products with respect to each well-defined group of customers. It is the process of dividing your potential customer base into groups with similar needs, under the theory that they will likely respond in similar ways to how those needs are addressed. One example of this is to divide the market by demographics and sell printers to college students and to working adults. Another example is to divide it by geography. If you have an product you want to launch internationally, the US market and in the Chinese market are two different market segments.

Can you describe the difference between a market-pull product development and a technology-push product development?

Market-pull product: product development process begins with a market opportunity and uses whatever technology available to satisfy the market need Technology-push product: research and development in new technology drives product development; technology enters market without knowing if it meets a user need. Matches the technology to a market opportunity

Describe the difference between a market and an industry

Markets consist of buyers and their needs. An industry consists of sellers and distributors that offer products.

What is the purpose of "target costing"?

Mechanism that ensures that manufacturing costs are set in a way that allows the product to be competitively priced in the marketplace.

How would you describe a Product-Service System? Can you give an example?

Most services have some associate physical products and most physical products. The bundle of physical and intangible components is called a Product-Service System. An example is a car company like Honda. You purchase a physical car from the dealership and they provide you with a service that gives you road side assistance if you need it. This is a combination of a service and a product.

One quantitative method for estimating the success of a new product is a Net Present Value (NPV) analysis. How does this type of analysis measure the potential success or failure of a new product development?

NPV provides a quantitative understanding of the key profit drivers of the project by summing and estimating the expected future cash flow of a product and converting that cash flow to its present value. It provides an objective evaluation of projects and alternatives and brings a measure of structures and discipline to the assessment of product development projects.

What does the term "latent needs" refer to?

Needs that many customers recognize as important in a final product but do not or cannot articulate in advance

Can you identify at least two limitations in solely using a quantitative analysis for estimating new product success?

One limitation of solely using quantitative analysis for estimating new product success are that the analysis only focuses on measurable quantities, but some implicants are difficult to quantify. Another limitation is that they depend on validity of assumptions and data, so they are unable to fully capture the characteristics if dynamic and competitive environments.

Explain how Porter's Five Forces model aids in strategic product planning?

Porter's Five Forces modeling aids are used to understand the industry's profitability and discover opportunities. It evaluates how the five forces of suppliers, buyers, new entrants, substitute products, and rivalry between existing competitors impact the industry. The power of suppliers can be minimized if you look for multiple suppliers or different components. The power of buyers can be minimized if you do not depend on a single buyer. New entrants have power if it is easy to replicate a specific product. Patents and branding are two ways to minimize their power. Substitute products meet the same need as existing products and can affect profits because it removed some demand. Companies use this information in strategic product planning to determine what pressures will be placed on the company if they go into a particular industry. This guides what products they choose to produce

How would you describe a Product Architecture?

Product architecture is an output of Concept Development. It is the assignment of the functional elements of a product to the physical building blocks of the product.

The culmination of new product planning is a Mission Statement or a Product Development Proposal (PDP) for each proposed product. What information does this document contain?

Product description, benefit (value) proposition, key business goals, target market, assumptions and constraints that guide the development effort, stakeholders, staffing, budgets

What are "platform products?"

Product is built around an established technological system that includes a set of common elements (like parts or technology) that are shared across a range of the company's products

How would you describe a Product Specification?

Product specification is the precise description of what the product has to do. It must include metrics and values.

Describe some of the advantages of a Modular Architecture over an Integrated Architecture.

Products with a modular architecture have chunks that implement one or a few functional elements and have well defined interactions between the chunks that are fundamental to the primary function of the product. Products with an integral architecture have functional elements that are implemented using more than one chunk, with a single chunk having many functional elements. The interactions between these chunks are not well defined and may not be essential to the primary function of the product. Integral architectures are typically designed with the highest possible performance in mind; however, if one component is not optimal, the product may require extensive redesign. Modular architecture allows design changes to be made in one chunk without requiring changes to the others to function properly; therefore, it is more simple and reusable, especially for platform products.

Can you name three different uses for prototypes in a product development program?

Prototypes can be used for learning, milestones, and communication. Prototypes can be used for learning by providing the development team with answers to questions like "will this work?" and "how well does it address the need?" They can be used as a milestone to provide the team with tangible goals by demonstrating that certain functionalities are possible to execute. They can also be used to enrich communication with management, vendors, partners, customers, and investors by serving as a visual, 3D representation of the future product.

Why must a product development team consider doing both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of a new product that is being considered?

Quantitative and qualitative techniques can help ensure that the team makes economically sound development decisions. These techniques are used to evaluate operational design and development decisions and make go/no-go decisions at the end of each phase of development.

How would you describe the concept of "Robust Design" to one of your friends?

Robust Design is designing products and processes that are minimally impacted by external forces or noise. Examples of noise include variations in the parameters, environment, manufacturing or the operation of the product. A robust product or process performs correctly even with these variations.

What are some of the qualitative factors that should be considered when performing an analysis of new product success?

Some qualitative factors that should be considered are the ways that the experience from the new product will benefit other company products and whether there will be significant fluctuations in dollar/euro exchange rates that will change the cost of component parts. Other factors are the ways the competitors will react to the introduction of the product and how they will modify their own development projects in reaction to the new product.

In developing new products, development teams face many tradeoffs. What are some of the potential tradeoffs or interactions between Product Development Time, Product Cost, and Product Performance?

Some trade offs are that decreased product development time can result in lower product performance and potentially product cost. Striving for increased product performance may require additional product cost and development time. Lower product cost can decrease development time and potentially result in decreased product performance.

Which product development process flow would be applicable to the development of a software product; generic, spiral, or complex?

Spiral product development process flow because it depicts the process used to develop Quick-Build products where designing, prototyping, and testing activities are repeated a number of times. This iterative processes is essential to software development because it allows for a more flexible and responsive product development process.

Explain the difference between a "target specification" and the "final specification."

Target specifications: set after identifying customer or market needs and before the team knows what constraints the product technology will place on what can be achieved and set after final specifications: set once the product concept has been selected, technological constraints have been assessed, production costs evaluated, and following any trade-offs required between product characteristics

What does a Full Factorial Experiment explore?

The Full Factorial Design of Experiments involves the systematic exploration of every combination of levels of each factor. This allows the team to identify all of the multifactor interaction effects, in addition to the primary (main) effect of each factor on performance.

What is the classic trade-off between a functional organization and a project organization?

The classic trade-off between functional organization and project organization is between deep functional expertise and coordination efficiency

Describe the elements of the "Parameter Diagram" and explain how it works.

The elements of a parameter diagram are control factors, noise factors, and performance metrics. Control factors are design variables that can be changed in a controlled way during the experiment to explore the product's performance under many parameter combinations. Noise factors are variables that cannot explicitly be controlled during manufacture and operation of the product. Performance metrics are the product specifications of interest in the experiment.

Prototypes can be usefully classified along two dimensions of interest. Can you describe these dimensions?

The first dimension of interest is the degree to which a prototype is physical as opposed to analytical. Physical prototypes are tangible artifacts created to approximate the future product and analytical prototypes represent the product in a non-tangible way, usually mathematical or visual. The second dimension is the degree to which a prototype is comprehensive as opposed to focused. A focused prototype implements one or a few of the attributes of the product, whereas a comprehensive prototype is a full-scale, fully operational version of the product.

What are the key ideas in Designing for Assembly? (i.e. reducing the cost of assembly)

The key ideas for DFA are minimizing parts count, maximizing the ease of handling parts, and maximizing the ease of inserting parts. This results in lower labor costs as well as other indirect benefits.

Manufacturing costs are the cost a company incurs in building a product. What are the major components of manufacturing costs?

The major components of manufacturing costs are cost of the components of the product, assembly, testing, and overhead costs. Component costs refer to the cost of standard off the shelf components or custom built components. Assembly costs include labor, materials, equipment, and tools. Testing cost also includes labor, equipment, and tooling. Overhead costs are in the form of direct and indirect costs. Direct overhead are considered overhead and include purchasing, QA, facilities, equipment maintenance. Indirect overhead includes things like security and building maintenance.

Planning for Downstream Development includes a Product Description, a Marketing Plan, a Business Plan and an Engineering Plan. Can you briefly summarize what information might be of interest to management in each of these plans when making a decision whether or not to develop a product?

The marketing plan validates the need for the product and defines the value proposition of the new product. Additionally, it presents an analysis of the competition and identifies who will buy and how much. The business plan estimates the breakeven point in time for the new product and the revenues and profits for 3 to 5 years after launch. It also contains the manufacturing capacity requirements and risk analysis. The engineering plan includes the technical resources required, including specialists and the development milestones. It also states the availability of engineering samples for pre-production and the labor, materials, and services required to develop the new product. All this information is important for management to decided whether or not to develop the proposed product.

What is the purpose of developing a cost model of a product in refining the specifications?

The purpose of developing a cost model is to make sure that the product can be produced at the target cost. Cost models along with technical performance models are used to develop final specifications and make trade offs when necessary.

Name at least three distinctive attributes of a service process that can be dealt with explicitly by representing the service with a process flow diagram.

The role of time, customer interactivity, modularity of process, and close matching capacity and demand are three attributes of services that can be shown on a process flow diagram.

When you are developing a new product, how would you assess the needs for Industrial Design? (I.e. What two metrics would you use?)

The two metrics for assessing the need for industrial design are ergonomic needs and aesthetic needs. Ergonomic needs include considering the importance of "ease of use," ease of maintenance and safety issues. Additionally, ergonomic needs address the number of user interactions needed for the product to function and whether or not those are novel user interactions.Aesthetic Needs are aspects of a product that related to its human interface. These needs include whether or not visual product differentiation is required and the importance of pride of ownership, image, and/or fashion.

What does the term visual equity refer to?

Visual equity is establish when a company's products maintain a consistent and recognizable appearance. Customers develop a positive association with the company and the product quality, which leads them to purchase more products from that company.

What do we mean by the statement; the goal of concept selection is not to select the best concept but to develop the best concept?

You need to combine and refine concepts to develop better ones