Product Development Approach Research Articles

Fuzzy linear programming models for NPD using a four-phase QFD activity process based on the means-end chain concept

Abstract Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-driven approach in processing new product development (NPD) to maximize customer satisfaction. Determining the fulfillment levels of the “hows”, including design requirements (DRs), part characteristics (PCs), process parameters (PPs) and production requirements (PRs), is an important decision problem during the four-phase QFD activity process for new product development. Unlike previous studies, which have only focused on determining DRs, this paper considers the close link between the four phases using the means-end chain (MEC) concept to build up a set of fuzzy linear programming models to determine the contribution levels of each “how” for customer satisfaction. In addition, to tackle the risk problem in NPD processes, this paper incorporates risk analysis, which is treated as the constraint in the models, into the QFD process. To deal with the vague nature of product development processes, fuzzy approaches are used for both QFD and risk analysis. A numerical example is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model.

An integrated framework for new product development using who-when-where-why-what-how (5W1H), theory of inventive problem solving and patent information – a case study

Companies are not expected to compete and survive with their same/similar products in today's dynamic and turbulent market conditions. Therefore, companies are in search of an agile new product development (NPD) approach in order to respond to rapid changes in the market without ignoring innovativeness as well. Beside these considerations, the companies are still calling for a cheap, robust and fast available method which can enhance the whole product development process. The existing NPD capabilities of the companies would be better to be utilised in order to overcome the well-known obstacles. There are a lot of creativity management tools, techniques and sources available without additional charge in order to achieve the above purpose. It should be noted that those tools and techniques are quite similar with special pros and cons of each. In this article, a novel framework is proposed for NPD process that integrates three of those techniques. The proposed framework merges theory of inventive problem solving methodology with a patent alarm system which enables tracking of 'trend changes' in patenting activities. It also introduces a modified idea-generation scheme with who- when- where- why- what- how (5W1H) methodology that helps companies to drive inventions/innovations and inspires ideas that escape from 'ordinary' and 'linear' thinking.

Coordinating new product development and supply chain management

Effective implementation of the new product development (NPD) process not only enables management to coordinate the efficient flow of new products, but will also assist to support ramp-up of various supply chain activities and other related activities supporting the commercialisation of the product. Thus, companies need to address all these issues in parallel to be successful and this requires some kind of integrative product development approach. The purpose of this research is to increase the understanding of how NPD is connected to supply chain management (SCM) by investigating how the NPD process is structured and executed in two international manufacturing companies seeking to realise an innovative, predictable and efficient product development. Several essential linkages between NPD and SCM have been derived from case study findings concerning important issues for successful product development.

Platform-oriented product development: prospects and limitations

Globalised demands for products variants with reduced developmental time lead firms to consider effective and organised product development approach. In order to fulfil these requirements, manufacturing firms are increasingly moving towards platform-oriented product development or are planning to do so to reduce complexity and better leverage investments in product design, manufacturing and marketing. In this paper, an overview of key topics related to platform design and product variety management is provided. A review of recent works on product platform design and its application to industries is discussed. A generic design structure matrix (DSM) tool is presented that outlines an effective methodology for platform design. This methodology is explained through presenting an example of a diesel fueled ship engine. Different limitations and risks associated with the management of platform-based product design and development are discussed along with some future research directions too.

Formal Rules in Product Development: Sensemaking of Structured Approaches*

Many scholars consider the use of formal structured approaches to manage product development as very significant for successful product innovation. Others consider them a predictor of the likely outcome of the processes. Structured approaches can be considered management technologies for product development. Prior research has addressed the design of structured approaches and has measured how different types or generations of these are related to different processes and outcomes in different ways. However, only limited research has addressed how managers and employees actually understand and makes sense of these methods. This paper investigates how structured approaches are translated through a number of interpretations into daily practices. The research draws on research in sociology and management accounting to analyze structured approaches for product development as a managerial technology that consists of rules that individuals must understand (i.e., make sense of). The paper presents arguments for building a model of factors that influence the sensemaking of structured approaches for product development based on Scandinavian cases. First, structured approaches are presented as a type of managerial technology that consists of rules. Second, a framework to classify structured approaches for product development according to their degree of elaborateness and exhaustiveness is derived. This helps to identify the types of rule systems in companies—and how these influence everyday practices. The sensemaking from rules to practice is implemented through a number of translations, based on the context, the history, and the authorized statements and feedback processes. Empirical findings show that structured approaches differ both with respect to their degree of elaborateness and exhaustiveness. Additionally, firms differ greatly in terms of how rigorously they enforce the rules. Furthermore, the importance assigned to them by functional managers and project managers differ greatly. Even companies with extensive and elaborate rule regimes enforce the rules in a flexible manner, and rules are often applied at the discretion of project managers. Practices are influenced by the interpretation, use, and feedback from senior managers. Observations make it possible to develop a model for the sensemaking processes that influences how a specific structured approach through sensemaking is altered, modified, and sometimes even cut off from influencing innovation processes. The sensemaking of rules might reverse elaborate and exhaustive rules into quite flexible systems in practice. One implication of this is that individual sensemaking of structured approaches for product development thus needs to be analyzed to understand managerial practices. Another implication is that it cannot be assumed, a priori that formal approaches are the same as exercised practices.

A Dynamic Planning Approach for New Product Development

This paper presents a quantifying and reordering method for new product development based on the concurrent engineering concept. We propose to establish a fuzzy design structure matrix (FDSM) by quantifying the information flow of activity factors of new product development and employing the fuzzy clustering method. Utilizing the proposed partition and tearing algorithm to reorder matrixes, we can realize deeply the inner hierarchy workings of concurrent engineering in the new product development process. The purpose of this paper is to develop a dynamic planning method that is innovative, efficient and flexible for new product development by using the concurrent design concept and FDSM analysis. It ultimately helpful to designers and managers to grasp the interactive information flow between each of the activity factors for planning an optimum design process in new product development. One case study is employed to illustrate this method and the result validates that it can reduce the iterations of design process and shorten the product development time.

Cultural patterns in product design ideas: comparisons between Australian and Iranian student concepts

In the product development process, cultural influences arguably come into play, such that the concepts created by industrial designers are partly shaped by the designers' own cultural and societal values. This study investigates the integration of the cultural preferences of designers into their product design concepts as well as notes the culturally related similarities and differences in their product development approaches. Examination of data from a product conceptualisation exercise involving industrial design students from Australia and Iran revealed ten patterns within each cultural group. In studying these patterns, it became clear that there are links between the cultural characteristics of designers and the patterns that emerged from the concepts.

Strategic life-cycle modelling and simulation for sustainable product innovation

Many specific methods and tools have been developed to deal with sustainability problems. However, without a unifying theory it is unclear how these relate to each other and how they can be used strategically. A Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) is being developed to cover this need for clarity and structure. It includes backcasting from a principled definition of sustainability as a key feature. The aim of this thesis is to study how this framework can guide the use and improvement of detailed methods and tools, in particular to support sustainable product innovation (SPI). First, a new strategic life-cycle management approach is presented, in which the selection of aspects to be considered are not based on typical down-stream impact categories, but on identified major violations of sustainability principles. Ideas of how this approach can inform various specific methods and tools are also presented, as a basis for an integrated “toolbox” for SPI. As part of such, a new “template” approach for sustainable product development (TSPD) is developed through a sustainability assessment case study of TVs. That study indicates that this approach can create a quick and strategically relevant overview of critical sustainability aspects of a product, as well as facilitate communication between top management, product developers and external stakeholders. Based on such an assessment, it is sometimes necessary to go deeper into details, including the use of specific engineering methods and tools. To facilitate a coordinated assessment of sustainability aspects and technical aspects, an introductory procedure for sustainability-driven design optimization is suggested trough a water jet cutting case study. Equally important, to get a breakthrough for SPI, it is essential to integrate sustainability aspects into the overall decision-making process at different levels in companies. An approach to assessing sustainability integration in strategic decision systems is therefore also developed through a case study involving several companies. Finally, the integration between the FSSD and general systems modeling and simulation (SMS) is discussed and tested in another water jet cutting case study. It is shown feasible to start with the FSSD to create lists of critical flows and practices, ideas of long term solutions and visions, and a first rough idea about prioritized early investments. After that, SMS can be applied to study the interrelationships between the listed items, in order to create more robust and refined analyses of the problems at hand, possible solutions and investment paths, while constantly coupling back to the sustainability principles and guidelines of the FSSD. This research shows that the combination of the FSSD with detailed methods and tools cohesively provides decision-makers with both a robust overview and, when needed, a more coordinated and effective detailed support. To utilize its full potential, this approach should now be integrated into decision processes, software and manuals for SPI.

Formal Rules in Product Development: Sensemaking of Structured Approaches

Many scholars consider the use of formal structured approaches to manage product development as very significant for successful product innovation. Others consider them a predictor of the likely outcome of the processes. Structured approaches can be considered management technologies for product development. Prior research has addressed the design of structured approaches and has measured how different types or generations of these are related to different processes and outcomes in different ways. However, only limited research has addressed how managers and employees actually understand and makes sense of these methods. This paper investigates how structured approaches are translated through a number of interpretations into daily practices. The research draws on research in sociology and management accounting to analyze structured approaches for product development as a managerial technology that consists of rules that individuals must understand (i.e., make sense of). The paper presents arguments for building a model of factors that influence the sensemaking of structured approaches for product development based on Scandinavian cases. First, structured approaches are presented as a type of managerial technology that consists of rules. Second, a framework to classify structured approaches for product development according to their degree of elaborateness and exhaustiveness is derived. This helps to identify the types of rule systems in companies — and how these influence everyday practices. The sensemaking from rules to practice is implemented through a number of translations, based on the context, the history, and the authorized statements and feedback processes. Empirical findings show that structured approaches differ both with respect to their degree of elaborateness and exhaustiveness. Additionally, firms differ greatly in terms of how rigorously they enforce the rules. Furthermore, the importance assigned to them by functional managers and project managers differ greatly. Even companies with extensive and elaborate rule regimes enforce the rules in a flexible manner, and rules are often applied at the discretion of project managers. Practices are influenced by the interpretation, use, and feedback from senior managers. Observations make it possible to develop a model for the sensemaking processes that influences how a specific structured approach through sensemaking is altered, modified, and sometimes even cut off from influencing innovation processes. The sensemaking of rules might reverse elaborate and exhaustive rules into quite flexible systems in practice. One implication of this is that individual sensemaking of structured approaches for product development thus needs to be analyzed to understand managerial practices. Another implication is that it cannot be assumed, a priori that formal approaches are the same as exercised practices.

Integrative Modeling to Produce Ornamental Products

This work is geared towards the proposition of methodologies to automate the arena of design and manufacturing for producing ornamental products (jewelry, screens, wooden carvings and stamp blocks, bottles) of different forms (stretch-formed, carved, fret-worked, lattice-worked, engraved and blow-formed). The various classes of ornamental patterns are designed and generated to make actual artifacts using different fabrication processes. The work adopts integrated product development approach which brings two different worlds of creativity, innovative designing and agile manufacturing, into contact with each other by transferring the product information from virtual representation tools to Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) technologies. The presented Computer Aided Design (CAD) paradigms provide the capability of designing custom-engineered ornamental products in an easy-to-use and efficient manner, using parametric design concept.

An integrated group decision-making approach for new product development

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a well-known planning methodology for translating customer needs into relevant design and production requirements. The intent of applying QFD is to incorporate the voice of the customer into the various phases of the product development cycle for a new product, or a new version of an existing product. The traditional QFD structure requires individuals to express their preferences in a restricted scale without exceptions. In practice, people contributing to the process tend generally to give information about their personal preferences in many different ways, numerically or linguistically, depending on their background. Moreover, collaborative decision-making is not an emphasized issue in QFD even though it requires the involvement of several people. In this study, the QFD methodology is extended by introducing a new group decision-making approach that takes into account multiple preference formats and fusing different expressions into one uniform group decision by means of fuzzy set theory. Moreover, a benchmarking procedure based on the Choquet integral is proposed to rate competing systems and find which dimensions need improvement.

An integrated and collaborative approach for complex product development in distributed heterogeneous environment

Multidisciplinary collaborative modeling and simulation is an effective approach to verify the dynamic behaviour of a complex product such as an aerospace vehicle or a locomotive. The design environment of such products must cater for the requirement for geographical distribution and structural heterogeneity in the modern industrial context. The focus of our research is a solution for such a collaborative modeling and simulation environment. Our approach is to utilize the IEEE standard High Level Architecture for distributed simultaneous simulation execution and management. At the same time, Web services technology is employed to deploy and integrate functional models for the simulation. The method for model description in this framework is proposed. The techniques for simulation execution and service encapsulation are discussed. A prototype system is implemented and a case study of locomotive tilting component design is executed. We find that both High Level Architecture and Web services have their expertise for collaborative simulation and the integration of these two technologies does achieve better interoperability and reusability among heterogeneous simulation components in a distributed environment. The new approach has considerable promise for the efficient and successful complex product design.

Design and usage of an engineering methodology for product-service systems

This article describes a development methodology for product-service systems where the characteristics of material and service components can be systematically derived on the basis of criteria resulting from customer requirements. Typical for this development process is the fact that the fulfilment of the characteristics required by the customer is not linked from the first to material or service components. This takes place during the development process of the product-service system. The approach introduced here, exemplified by the heating, air conditioning and sanitary engineering branch, adequately integrates existing approaches for product development and service engineering.

Advanced STEP parameterised and constrained features for reverse engineering

Reverse Engineering (RE) is a research field where physical models are digitised to be reconstructed, surface by surface, feature by feature, as a CAD model. This paper deals with features known by their mathematical equation, obtained when a touch probe based digitisation is used. The paper presents an interactive approach for RE of mechanical part. It introduces a CAD model reconstruction methodology based on new STEP AP203 ED2 standard integrating parameterised features that enables the parameterisation of the rebuilt features. This is needed for a complete integration of the new CAD model in a collaborative product development approach.

A holistic finite element and multi‐body systems approach for the virtual product development

AbstractThis article describes the creation of a holistic modeling of a machine tool using a multi‐body‐systems approach with an integrated flexible body. This lower order model is validated by a detailed finite element model and its eigenvalues are improved by a model‐updating algorithm. The improved model is used for investigation of the machine vibration during the cutting process and the prediction of chatter. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

2ODE-IPD: An Object-Oriented Design Environment for Robust and Reliable Interdisciplinary Product Design

Electromechanical products such as electrical toothbrushes and robots carry multitechnological characteristics, and functional operation of these systems is depended on the successful operation of all system components. There are interactions between electronic and mechanical components, software and other systems in complex products. These interactions such as heat, vibration, gravity, corrosion and electromagnetism can lead to functional and financial losses and failures of these kinds of products. The physical arrangement and mutual relation of subsystems and parts are very important to design reliable and robust systems. However, designing these products is complicated and time-consuming due to limitations on available expertise, tools, and methods. This paper presents a new product development approach proposed for integrating mechanical design with electronic design to improve design and manufacture of electromechanical products in terms of customer requirements, reliability, structural integrity, weight, cost and time. This approach has been implemented in a Delphi based environment integrated with a CAD system. It assists in evaluating complex systems as far as parts relation and their possible effects on each other, costs, weight and physical constraints are concerned in the early design process. This helps the designers to avoid design iterations, and minimize the likelihood of failures and rapidly develop reliable complex products subject to given constraints.

Phase reviews versus fast product development: a business case

Business enterprises are always seeking robust and innovative approaches for new product development as part of their competitive strategy. Today many businesses use product development processes that include phase reviews. A number of researchers offer up a different view of product development. They suggest that phase reviews can slow down product development, and the critical path should be focused on. However, the PACE® process is a phase review process that has several advantages over a critical path focus. ACME SC is an example of a company that decided to manage its product development pipeline using a process based on PACE®. There are reviews between each of the six phases where management can approve the schedule and budget for the next phase, order more work before approval, put the project on hold, or cancel the project. The paper discusses the advantages offered by ACME SC’s PACE® product development process, the disadvantages mentioned in the literature and recommendations on how this or any other business enterprise can modify the PACE® process to remedy several of the disadvantages, including its adaptation in applications involving manufacturing process and manufacturing system development.

Building brand equity and share of heart at Nassau Valley Vineyards

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to describe an innovative promotional and product development approach that has implications for new product developers in consumer industries.Design/methodology/approachThe case describes an approach to new product development and promotion. The organization's original name has been retained as well as individual managers' names.FindingsThe paper provides information and action approaches to new product developers that may reduce the risk of product failure. The subject company recognizes that third party competitive awards are public relations tools to build sales and product image. Their results offer direct implications for new product development and promotional teams in the wine industry. By extension, the implications may aid traditional companies outside of the wine industry.Research limitations/implicationsAs in all case studies, the specific conditions found in one organization may not be found more generally in others. Readers are cautioned that the conclusions drawn in the case may have limited applicability.Practical implicationsThe case depicts an innovative application of word of mouth generating quality competitions in boosting sales. It also depicts the use of consumer and expert opinions in selecting wines to submit for judging. Other organizations may find the technique of value in their own efforts.Originality/valueThe case is one of the first to describe a successful promotional technique that minimizes the reliance on advertising and concentrates on the product quality characteristics resulting from the product development process.

Mass production of tooling product families via modular feature-based design to manufacturing collaboration in PLM

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is recognized as one of the most effective approaches for better, fast and cheaper product development and management. Mass customization is one of the key technologies in PLM to provide tailored product to end customers with the cost of mass production. Characterized by short production lead-time and dynamic customer requirements with low batch size and high variety, tooling product families are facing the challenge of high production cost. New technology with modular feature-based design to manufacturing collaboration to satisfy the needs of mass production with low cost in tooling industry is developed in this study. A corresponding prototype system is demonstrated to show the efficiency of the technology developed.

QUALITY ENHANCEMENT OF FINGER SURFACE TEMPERATURE FEEDBACK THROUGH INNOVATIVE DESIGN APPROACHES

ABSTRACT Due to aggravating competition and living pressure in modern societies, stress syndrome worsens, and somatic dysfunctions or pathological changes arise more obviously and frequently than before. For stress management, physiological feedback or muscle relaxation with physiological feedback monitoring is useful in alleviating stress syndrome and improving mental health. Physiological feedback has been recognized as one of the main treatment modes in behavior therapy, and is widely adopted in clinical practices to date. Among all measures, temperature feedback is most employed by therapists. However, devices suitable for mobile use and daily monitoring, which are critical to training of stress management, are absent. To fulfill such need, a portable temperature feedback apparatus is developed, which is in form of a ring and an innovative design. In this paper, the product design process is addressed as an interdisciplinary approach for new product development and a case study for design integration. Signal analysis and usability test are held to verify functionalities of the ring device. As a result, a new treatment approach integrating the ring device and its concerned systems into group therapy is proposed. With the new design, stress management becomes more viable and distant treatment more feasible.