First of all let us see the core definition of Product design which is described as the process of imagining, creating, and iterating products that satisfy the users’ needs. The key to successful product design is to understand the end-user or customer’s requirements
Things to keep in Mind while product design
The most important part of the design is that it should be converted into a tangible product. For example, The design of a pen is not successful till it gets converted into the physical form that can be used for what this aimed to be designed.
Process used in Product Design
Now we need to discuss What are the processes that should be used for product design. I will try to understand this with the help of certain examples.
As well as we will see what factors and standard guidelines should be considered when we are converting a prototype for a particular design into a final product.
So I think the next topic will be much more useful because here I am just giving just an introduction to product design.
The next sessions will be much more useful in the context of the application and principles of product design and development.
First let us see the introductory part of the course: why product design is an important concept and why all engineers and managers and graduates should know this concept.
Need of Product Design?
Anybody who thinks fresh, who has an innovative bent of mind and who thinks the solution for the problems all around in life and can generate different types of Ideas. The so late 80s now the basic process and why there is a need to design a new product now? every organisation has to design develop and introduce new products as a survival and growth strategies now, you can see if I ask you that the room in which you are settings, if you see around you, maybe noted down the five products and just try to evolve that how these products have changed with the time. If I ask to observe some product nearby you that how the technology related to these product has changed or how the designs related to these products have changed, You will see that you will be able to write at least 20 pages on these few products that initially this product used to be like that and now the product has evolved over a period of times and has been converted into a new product. So that is the importance of survival & growth strategy.
companies always keep on doing research and development always generating new and new ideas, always doing different types of innovations like incremental innovation of the breakthrough innovation to come up with new and new products so that either they are able to maintain their market share or they are able to grow as first survival and other is growth.
The first is to ensure survival in the market and the second is to further increase their market share by launching new and new and improved products related to the field of specialisation.
That is one thing why the new products are being developed and the second thing is the product design is the conceptualization of an idea about a product and transforming of the idea into the reality this I have already explained that in our course, we will try to see from Idea generation to it can be the culmination of that Idea into the final product than to talk transform the idea into reality.
Product development process:
Transform the idea into reality. Special specifications about the products are prepared so we will try to understand when we will see in detail how the product development process takes place.
The specification is prepared by considering different constraints such as production process customer expectation acceptor to be will see that when we will design the product we will see the constraints such as the production process where they have already explained that incoming session our focus will be to see that what are the various specifications which are dedicated to the specific manufacturing process.
For example, casting that when the product has to be cast. What are the guidelines to be kept in mind? If the property is a product that has to be made by a forging process then what are the guidelines to be kept in mind all that? We will see that I will outline all the guidelines if the product is being made by the Casting process. What are the factors or guidelines to be taken care of similarly?
In the product design stage, various aspects of the products are analysed and the final decision regarding the product is taken on the basis of analysis. In the coming session, we will see Value Engineering which is one of the analysis tools and specifically focused on the cost of the products In the next few sessions our focus will be on the analysis procedure.
We will see the marketing aspects, the product characteristics like durability and dependability, the economic aspects and we will see the various reliability aspect to those all aspects broadly. We call them analyses of the product. You have an idea. Then you have to analyse it using the standard technique and the standard analysis procedures are followed.
I am just giving an example of a standard procedure that is followed to analyse the product to analysis is also an important part of the product design then this decision can be any aspect related to the product for example dimension and tolerance is a type of material for each component.
So when we do the analysis, we will undergo all these things we will see that what should be the dimension of the broad. What should be the tolerance is specified for those products that parents should be made up of which type of material and further whether each component should be made up of the same material or it should be made up of a different material. Now if you try to relate this concept of product development with your life.
Importance of material selection
You can see you may be right now using a PC, tab or mobile for reading this particular discussion. Now, you can see the materials one can ever metallic body to the laptop one can have a plastic body to a desktop. So why are there two different materials? Type of material is also very very important. Some of you may be using a pen to write down some points.
now sometimes having a metallic body, Sometimes may be having a plastic body or some maybe even use a pencil to do the same task. Now it means the selection of a material for a particular product s also equally important all that also we will see when we will do the product analysis.
Why new products required?
Now again, I am coming to the same point because that is the most important point. If you are doing the course and product design and development first answer, you should have in your mind.
Is it why new products are required when we’re living in a very comfortable life? We are close to where we are having food to eat, We are having a house to live in, then why is there a need for new and new products?
So we should try to understand why new products are required as I have already told you that there is a need for the companies to survive or to grow. So therefore new products is a necessity for organisations to keep their business going through these points further highlighted the need for a new product design.
I will just brief it for you. organisations are required to design the new products for the following reasons to be in the business for a long time, which we can say is a survival for the camp.
Why evolution is important?
If they do not come up with new products they will perish. There is a very famous saying that if you do not obsolete your product you will be obsolete from the market. What does that mean?
It means that you have to automatically decide how you should make your product solute and come up with a new product. Otherwise, you will be obsolete and you will lose your business.
I don’t want to name here, but there are a number of companies in India that were not able to come up with innovative new designs of their products and ultimately were eliminated from the market.
So you can be yourself in this assignment problem where you can find 5 companies that did not know about it and finally lost business. So that can be one particular question in one of the assignments so you can see first is a survival strategy for the company to satisfy the unfulfilled needs of the customer.
So there can be so many examples. I will discuss in the next sessions where there was a need that existed in the market and their companies which satisfy those need
Handmade shoes profit out of it. The second reason for the new product design process and developing a new product is to satisfy the unfulfilled needs of the customer is too much competition in the existing product line.
So, that is another thing because of the competition when we will see the product life cycle, you will see that there is a maturity phase in which there is a competition by the various companies to all those that competition also leads to if you see the automotive market, very good examples are there. A company is making initially two variants only but because of the competition setting in, they divided their product variety for product lines into four-five different automobiles. So the examples are well known to all of you and competition also leads to new product development.
Profit margin is on the decline. So that is also one good reason for coming up with the new product: the profit margins that are too much competition. These two points are related to the product life cycles and when we will come to the product life cycle, I will explain these two points again there that why competition leads to new product development and why the profit margin leads to new product development.
The last point here is the company’s existing product line becomes saturated and the sale is on the decline. So that is also one good reason for coming up with a new product.
Now, how much importance should we give to the design is very easily or very importantly explained in this particular slide? You can see how the product design and manufacturing influence the price-quality and cycle time. So 70 to 80% influence is exercised by design and
20 to 30% of it you can see influence is shown by or has been reported by manufacturing. What does this mean? This means that most of the things that get locked at the design stage only not designed, the output will be in the form of drawings that will have a bill of material.
So you will get that this particular product will be made by this material by this process. These may be nuts and bolts and screws that will be used for this product. So most of the things get frozen at the product design stage only so once the things get free the things get to fit your price also gets fixed and the quality of the product also gets fixed and the cycle time also more or less gets fit.
So the influence measure is of the design and then the manufacturing also has some influence of cotton 30% If you remember in today’s class only in the very beginning I said that we
Should focus more on the design philosophy rather than manufacturing now as a country as a whole we are seeing that we are manufacturing all the automobiles design input into those automobiles is very less so that we need to improve that.
So this is you can see a very important diagram which shows that design is an important aspect for any product manufacturing.
Yes, 20 to 30% only design by 70 to 80% influence not only on the price but the quality and the cycle time so this thing has to be taken care of. You can see just the simplest example of the design of a mobile you can see from 1990 to 2020.
Show example
How the design of the mobile has evolved over the period of time and current maybe this is showing this figure taken from this source is showing the design of the product.
we need to optimise all these things. We need to optimise based on economic principles. Therefore the design has evolved over so many periods so many years and the correct current design may not be the final design maybe another 20 years. We may even see the improvised design of a mobile phone. It’s not that if we are using a particular product there is no scope of defined change.
The design change can always happen and change is always to be or change should always be for the better need usually was a change is the only true change is inevitable and we have to always keep on looking for changes are looking for opportunities where we can further improve the durability the dependability the efficiency the effectiveness of the products and for that reason only we are undergoing This small module of 10 hours which can further influence of a design thinking and we can come up with
Which can satisfy the needs of society knowing all of us have so many ideas, but the reasons for new product failure.
Usually, the mortality rate of the idea is maybe I should say that if you generate a hundred ideas only to ideas will finally become successful products there can be so many ideas floating around us, but only 2% of the ideas will reach the market and 90% of the areas will die down.
So what can be the reasons that if you have an idea, but it is not becoming a successful product? So with the knowledge available in the various books on product design. This is a summary of the reasons which lead to poor design.
First one is the overestimation of the market size usually being most optimistic in nature. Usually, we say that the product that we are designing is going to have a bank effect on the market and is going to become the most successful.
Aspects of product design
Products overestimate the market size and it leads to product failure is a poor design of the product. We may not discuss this first aspect much in detail because it is related to the marketing aspects, but we will be focusing on the design aspects we will see that what is a poor design and what is a good design then the incorrect positioning of the product wrong timing of Launch It is priced to the product is not competitive cost was then chances that we may not be able to capture too much of market and the product may not be a successful show.
The price is also important in effective promotion again related to sales and promotion management influence the development cost and competition development cost is important. So we will further see that how we cannot economy is how we can optimise the development cost of the products. So management influence is also equally in
Because sometimes if you are the complete support of the management the product is advertised and marketed properly is given preference by the company which is the multi-product company and therefore the product gains in the market and it leads to the success of the products but is the management is a little bit apprehensive about the products and it is not complete or management support for the product then sometimes it may lead to failure.
But the percentage of such cases may be very very minimal. The major factors in this particular case are the point number to that is product design and the second can be the development cost and third is the competition and maybe to some extent the wrong timing of launching the product should be easy.
The Four Points we will try to address in our subsequent sessions and try to see how we can take care of these four points and make come up with the designs which lead to the market that we will try to see is just the basic concept that completes sessions on the product development process, but this is just an outline of how we develop new products in new products.
We have first the idea generation as I have already told you brainstorming can be one method of Idea generation or reading different articles related to the new products can be one good method of Idea generation.
Then sometimes looking at the needs around you can be a very good method of Idea generation.
So Idea generation is the first thing second is a screening of Ideas maybe we will come up with better ideas and take them to the next level than the concept development and testing. We will develop a complete concept that followed. It can be a rough sketch of that product.
Just be a pencil. We will draw on what is there in our mind regarding that product rough sketch of the product will lead to the concept that the marketing strategy development suppose.
We have that concept and we have developed it.
We will try to figure out the needs and requirements of people on the customers. We are going to use that product business analysis, a complete business plan usually called that can be developed, how much product should be sold in the market to reach the break-even analysis.
How much money should be invested to develop this idea into a tangible product? All those things will be discussed at the business analysis level than the product development test marketing and commercialization.
I should tell you that this is not the standard approach which is true in case of each and every product different segments of products are there and different segments of product different such approaches will be there, but we will try to develop a thought for any idea.
What are the standard methods for developing or bringing that Idea into reality for bringing that idea into a tangible product? This may not be
In the standard approach in different books, you may find different approaches of product development and we will try to make the best out of each approach for you can say the summary of all these approaches and try to develop our thoughts related to the product development process known for any successful product development.
There are five characteristics, which we should keep in mind. The first one is the product quality product cost development time development cost and development capability. So these are the five keywords for making successful products to our focus should be on quality cost time manufacturing cost and the capability of the company if we can make best push possible utilisation of the development capacity of a company we can definitely come up with the products or should I say successful products and that is the only target that we should come up with successful products.
Introduction of Concept of the product life cycle
No slightly, I would like to introduce here the concept of the product life cycle because this is important for the product development process of the new product development process. And then maybe in the next section. We will never complete discussions related to the product life cycle. The product life cycle is a course that our product sales and profits take over its lifetime Seguin.
I read it for you slightly. I was a bit not correct in reading that the product life cycle is the course that our products’ sales and profits take over their lifetime in the next slide.
I’ll show you how a typical Product life cycle looks like and the second point is the product life cycle concept is derived from the fact that a given product volume and revenue follow a typical pattern of four phases.
What are these four phases that we are going to see so how the sales of a product will change when it is launched into the market over a period of time that is usually called the product life?
Introduction to life cycle phases
Typical behaviour is observed for general types of products and that behaviour we try to analyse and use for our decision making related to the product development strategy and product development process unit slide.
We can see the four phases of the life cycle of a product are the first one is on the y-axis annual sales volume and on the x-axis is the time this is the time and the annual sales volume phase of the life cycle of a product of the first one is Introduction growth maturity or stabilization and decline again to revise introduction growth maturity and declines to any product which is launched in the market will definitely undergo these four stages of the sales of the product of the demand of the product will go through these four stages from starting from introduction growth maturity, and finally decline and this type of info for this type of information on the
Types of cycles usually will help us in our decision making related to the new product development. So I’ll finish today’s session with a very brief introduction to the product life cycle. But in the next section, we will definitely see the Product life cycle in detail and will try to understand what type of decisions we can make based on the product life cycle.
So to revise what we have covered in today’s class. I have given you a brief outline of the topics that we are going to cover in this course on product design and development. Then we have seen a reply to address why new products have to be developed. We have taken an example of a cycle of how it has evolved over a period of time.
And finally, we have seen what are the major reasons that lead to the failure of the product and in the last light, we have just seen a brief we can see in order to have continuity among the lectures. We’re just seen that there are a product life cycle and annual sales of a product.