PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
THROUGH CIM
INTRODUCTION
The expectations of today’s customer include
superior quality and performance, higher
technological capabilities and on time delivery.
All these are to be provided at reduced costs
because of global competition faced by the
manufacturing industries.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT CYCLE
Industries have to continuously upgrade their
products as well as introduce new products in the
market in order to retain as well as to increase their
market share.
The product development is the responsibility
of the research and development (R&D)
department of a manufacturing company. When a
product is initially introduced the sales volume will
be low. If the product is good and satisfies the
customers, the sales will pick up.
• Sometimes, if there are any problems in the product
the company will have to make changes or
improvements in the product which is a very
expensive proposition.
• If the defect is serious enough the company may have
to recall an entire batch of products at enormous cost
and loss of goodwill.
The sales and service department usually takes
care of attending to the customers’ problems.
That is why manufacturers of automobiles,
entertainment electronic goods, fast moving consumer
goods like washing machines and refrigerators etc
have elaborate sales and service network.
The cycle through which a product goes
through from development to retirement is
called the product life cycle.
The product development cycle starts with
– Developing the product concept,
– Evolving the design,
– Engineering the product,
– Manufacturing the part,
– Marketing and servicing.
The idea of a product may come from a
• Patent,
• Suggestion of the customers,
• Feedback of the sales and service department,
• Marketing department or from the R&D department.
Next stage is the conceptualization of the product.
The cost at which the product could be sold in the market
is decided and the
• overall design in terms of shape,
• functional specifications,
• ergonomics,
• aesthetics etc
Next stage by the design department who carefully
designs each assembly and each component of the
assembly.
• Detailed design analysis and optimization is
carried out at this stage.
• Design may have several variants.
For example, a passenger car
• Down version with the bare minimum options
• Luxury versions with several add on
functionalities.
Between these two extreme versions,
Number of models or variants to meet the needs
of customers with different paying capacities.
In a similar way,
• Satellite launch vehicle may be designed for different
payloads.
• Fighter aircraft may have different versions.
• Refrigerator will have to be marketed with different capacities.
The design department creates these designs through a top
down approach or a bottom up approach.
[Link] down approach, the entire assembly is
designed first and individual designs are done latter.
[Link] up approach, the component design is
done first and the product is realized by assembling
the components suitably.
The design also will involve preparation of detail drawings.
Engineering the product consists of process planning, tool
design, facility design, capacity planning, quality assurance
activities, procurement, assembly planning, etc.
Marketing department will have the responsibility of carrying
out appropriate product launch activities as well as planning the
sales and service network, advertising and training of sales and
service personnel.
The product goes through a series of continuous
refinement and improvements, additions etc.
• Example is a software package improved versions of
which are released as new versions at periodic intervals.
• The feedback from the marketing and services leads to
improvements in design and/or evolution of new designs.
As an example, the reader is advised to make a study of
the evolution of the various models of aircraft or passenger
cars over the last five decades.
SEQUENTIAL ENGINEERING
The traditional product development process at the prototype
development stage is sequential.
It includes
• Product design,
• Development of manufacturing process
• Supporting quality and testing activities, all carried out one after another.
• No interaction among the major departments
involved in product manufacturing during the
initial development process.
• Design department in a typical sequential product
development process finalizes the design without
consulting the manufacturing, quality or purchase
departments.
• Planning might feel it necessary to request design
changes based on a number of reasons like the
procurement or facility limitations.
• Changes in design may be called for when the
manufacturing department is unable to meet design
specifications or there are problems in assembly.
• The design documents are therefore sent back to the
design department for incorporating the changes.
• Lead to inevitable conflicts, each department
sticking to their own decisions and may often
require intervention of senior management to
resolve conflicts or differences in opinion.
• Design changes will involve both material and
time wastages.
• In an age of reduced product life cycles as we
witness today the time delay between market
demand and introduction of product in the market
has to be as short as possible.
• Sequential product development process, therefore,
may not suit the present global scenario.
• R & D group completes the design task and passes
the data to planning, which in turn passes the
information to manufacturing and so on.
• If any downstream department wants to introduce any
change, the process has to backtrack and this often
involves additional expenditure as well as inevitable
delay in realizing the product.
Sequential Engineering is often called “across
the wall” method.
• Each segment of the product development team
(Design, Planning, Manufacturing etc.) completes
its task in isolation and passes over the
documents to the next segment.
• No interaction among the groups before the
design is finalized.
• If a serious mistake in the product is detected during
testing, the revision process has to start from design,
resulting in materials wastage and loss of time.
• In the context of extensive outsourcing, there is also
need for intensive consultation between vendors
and manufacturers.
Concurrent engineering
Concurrent engineering or Simultaneous
Engineering is a methodology of restructuring the product
development activity in a manufacturing organization
using a cross functional team approach and is a technique
adopted to improve the efficiency of product design and
reduce the product development cycle time.
Concurrent Engineering brings together a wide spectrum of people from
several functional areas in the design and manufacture of a product.
Representatives from
-R & D,
-Engineering,
-Manufacturing,
-Materials management,
-Quality assurance,
-Marketing etc. develop the product as a team.
• Everyone interacts with each other from the start,
and they perform their tasks in parallel.
Team reviews the design from the :
-Point of view of marketing,
-Process,
-Tool design and procurement,
-Operation,
-Facility and capacity planning,
-Design for manufacturability,
-Assembly,
-Testing and maintenance,
-Standardization,
-Procurement of components and sub-
assemblies,
-Quality assurance etc as the design.
co-operation between various specialists and systematic
application of special methods such as
-QFD (Quality Function Deployment),
-DFMA (Design for Manufacture and Assembly)
-FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis)
ensures quick optimization of design and early detection
of possible faults in product and production planning.
COMPARISON OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING AND SEQUENTIAL
ENGINEERING
• Based on cost is attempted.
– Distribution of the product development cost during the product
development cycle in the below figure.
– 15% of the budget is spent at the time of design completion,
whereas the remaining 85% is already committed.
– Decisions taken during the design stage have an important
bearing on the cost of the development of the product.
– Therefore the development cost and product cost can be
reduced by proper and careful design.
1. REDUCTION IN THE NUMBER OF DESIGN CHANGES
• The advantage of concurrent engineering over the
traditional sequential (SE) and concurrent
engineering (CE) is that a large number of design
changes are identified and implemented at the
beginning or in the early phase of product
development cycle.
• Every stage of development in the case of
traditional sequential approach.
• The reduction in design change requests with CE is
substantially less at the later stages of the product
development process.
2. COST OF CHANGES IN DESIGN
• Cost of introducing a design change in a product
progressively increases as the development proceeds
through design and manufacturing.
• Change in the conceptual 3D CAD model costs Rs.50, 000.
• same change during the planning stage would cost Rs.1, 50,000.
• By the time the product moves to prototyping and testing, the
change may cost Rs.2, 50,000.
• The cost goes up to Rs.25,00,000 if the product is in the
manufacturing stage and
• Rs.50,00,000 or more after the company releases the product to
sales and marketing.
These numbers differ greatly from company
to company and from product to product, they
give a feel of the importance of feedback early in
the design cycle.
COST OF CHANGES IN DESIGN
3. HOLISTIC APPROACH TO PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT
• Concurrent engineering approach introduces a new
philosophy in product development.
• No longer is product development considered the
exclusive activity of the design department.
Participation of :
Planning,
Manufacturing,
Quality,
Service,
Vendor development and
Marketing personnel in the development process enables the cross functional
team to view the development as a total responsibility and this results in better
communication among the various departments.
4. ROBUST PRODUCTS
Concurrent approach to product design results in
products with fewer errors, avoids the loss of goodwill
of the customers due to poorly engineered products.
Entire product development team looks at each and
every aspect of products –
-Cost,
-Specifications,
-Aesthetics,
-Ergonomics,
-Performance and
-Maintainability.
The resulting product will naturally satisfy the customer.
5. REDUCTION IN LEAD TIME FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
• Time compression in product development is an
important issue today.
• Elimination of the errors in design appreciably
reduces the possibility of time overrun, enabling
the development schedule to be maintained.
IMPLEMENTATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING
The cycle of engineering design and
manufacturing planning involves interrelated
activities in different engineering disciplines
simultaneously, than sequentially
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
Presently, IT vendors offer a variety of tools for
implementing some form of concurrent
engineering.
-The tools can be broken into the following main
technological groups:
• Knowledge based engineering, production tools
and communication tools.
• Relational database management systems for
data management.
• Work flow automation and product life cycle
management (PLM) systems.
• Decision support systems.
• Enterprise resource planning systems.
The concurrent engineering approach can be characterized by the following
factors:
• Integration of product and process development
and logistics support
• Closer attention to the needs of customers
• Adoption of new technologies
• Continuous review of design and development
process
• Rapid and automated information exchange
• Cross functional teams
• Rapid prototyping
EXAMPLE OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING
Example for successful implementation of
concurrent engineering is the development of Scooty
moped and other products by TVS Motors Ltd. in
India. Before taking up the design cross functional
teams were formed to design and engineer the product.
This reduced not only the product development
time but also helped the manufacturer to
introduce the quality product in the market.
KEY FACTORS INFLUENCING THE SUCCESS OF
CE
Successful implementation of CE.
Hewlett Packard is one such example. Its joint venture in Japan,
Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard, reported amazing improvements after
implementing CE.
-Over a five year period, R & D’s cycle time decreased by 35%,
-Manufacturing costs declined 42%,
-Inventory dropped 64% and
-Field failure rates fell by 60%.
-Meanwhile its market share tripled and profits doubled.
