The document discusses product design and development. It describes the key phases of the product development process as idea generation, screening, concept development, product development, and commercialization. It explains that marketing, design, and manufacturing functions are central to product development. The challenges of product development include managing trade-offs, adapting to changes, making thousands of complex decisions under time pressure to create economically viable products. The goal of product design is to produce quality products that meet customer needs. Essential factors in product design include need, physical reliability, economic worth, financial feasibility, optimality, and following a design process.

1. SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL, CHEMICAL AND MATERIAL ENGINEERING
PRODUCT DESIGN
BY KUBA D.
SEPTEMBER 23/2023
ADAMA SCIENCE &TECHNOLOGICALUNIVERSITY

2. PRODUCT DESIGN /PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
is the set of activities beginning with the perception of a
market opportunity and ending in the production, sale,
and delivery of a product
in a very crude sense is to understand customer
needs and developing something, which is useful
for the customer and also economical in costs
In manufacturing, is bought as the raw material and convert
it into finished goods. In service sector, product has
different definition, example, Ola, Uber are products which
focused towards service segment and try to make a customer
satisfaction

3. WHO DESIGNS AND DEVELOPS PRODUCTS?
Product development
is an interdisciplinary activity requiring contributions from nearly all the functions of
a firm; however, three functions are almost always central to a product
development project:
Marketing:
The marketing function mediates the interactions between the firm and its
customers. Marketing often facilitates the identification of product opportunities,
the definition of market segments, and the identification of customer needs.
Marketing also typically arranges for communication between the firm and its
customers, sets target prices, and oversees the launch and promotion of the
product.
Design:
The design function plays the lead role in defining the physical form of the product
to best meet customer needs. In this context, the design function includes
engineering design (mechanical, electrical, software, etc.) and industrial design
(aesthetics, ergonomics, user interfaces).

4. CONT.…..
Manufacturing:
The manufacturing function is primarily responsible for
designing, operating, and/or coordinating the production
system in order to produce the product.
Broadly defined, the manufacturing function also often
includes purchasing, distribution, and installation. This
collection of activities is sometimes called the supply chain

5. THE CHALLENGES OF PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT
Developing great products is hard. Few companies are highly
successful more than half the time. These odds present a significant
challenge for a product development team. Some of the
characteristics that make product development challenging are:
Trade-offs: An airplane can be made lighter, but this action will
probably increase manufacturing cost. One of the most difficult
aspects of product development is recognizing, understanding, and
managing such trade-offs in a way that maximizes the success of the
product.
Dynamics: Technologies improve, customer preferences evolve,
competitors introduce new products, and the macroeconomic
environment shifts. Decision making in an environment of constant
change is a formidable task.

6. CONT.……
Details: The choice between using screws or snap-fits on the
enclosure of a computer can have economic implications of millions
of dollars. Developing a product of even modest complexity may
require thousands of such decisions.
Time pressure: Any one of these difficulties would be easily
manageable by itself given plenty of time, but product development
decisions must usually be made quickly and without complete
information.
Economics: Developing, producing, and marketing a new product
requires a large investment. To earn a reasonable return on this
investment, the resulting product must be both appealing to
customers and relatively inexpensive to produce.

7. THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS
is the sequence of steps or activities that an enterprise employs to conceive, design,
and commercialize a product. Many of these steps and activities are intellectual and
organizational rather than physical
A well-defined development process is useful for the following reasons:
Quality assurance: A development process specifies the phases a development
project will pass through and the checkpoints along the way. When these phases and
checkpoints are chosen wisely, following the development process is one way of
assuring the quality of the resulting product.
Coordination: A clearly articulated development process acts as a master plan that
defines the roles of each of the players on the development team. This plan informs
the members of the team when their contributions will be needed and with whom
they will need to exchange information and materials.

8. CONT.……
Planning: A development process includes milestones
corresponding to the completion of each phase. The timing of these
milestones anchors the schedule of the overall development
project.
Management: A development process is a benchmark for
assessing the performance of an on going development effort. By
comparing the actual events to the established process, a manager
can identify possible problem areas.
Improvement: The careful documentation and on going review of
an organization’s development process and its results may help to
identify opportunities for improvement.

9. THE FIVE PHASES OF THE GENERIC
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS ARE:
Idea generation
screening
concept development
product development and
commercialization

10. CONT.…….
Idea Generation
Where do the ideas for products or services come from?
What role does the voice of the customer play? Can you
create your own market?
is the initial stage where a business sources for ideas
regarding a new product. Some of the sources for
new product ideas include the business customers,
competitors, newspapers, journals, employees and
suppliers.

11. CONT.……
Screening
 generated ideas have to go through a screening
process to filter out the feasible ones. The business
seeks opinions from workers, customers and other
businesses to avoid the pursuit of costly unfeasible
ideas.
 External industry factors affecting small businesses,
such as competition, legislation and changes in
technology, influences the enterprise's decision
criteria. At the end of the screening process, the firm
remains with only a few feasible ideas from the large
pool generated

12. CONT.…….
Concept Development
 In the concept development phase, the needs of the target
market are identified, alternative product concepts are
generated and evaluated, and one or more concepts are
selected for further development and testing
Product Development
 entails the actual design and manufacture of
the product. Development commences with the
manufacture of a prototype that facilitates market
testing. Based upon the results of the tests, the
business owner decides on whether to undertake
large-scale production or not.

13. CONT.…….
Commercialization and Rollout
 Favourable results in the development stage precede
large-scale production and commercialization. Here,
the business launches its promotion campaign for the
new product. The market research conducted during
the conception stage influences the timing and
location of the product launch.

15. GOAL OF PRODUCT DESIGN
 Product design has a primary goal of producing a quality product
that meets the needs of the customer. The product design operation
is where the ideas for the product are generating; it is
where the look of the product is conceived; it is where the
components of the product are decided.
 This function of operations management is critical to the success
or failure of the company. If a quality product is designed, tested,
and produced in a production process that is well designed, and if
the product meets the needs of the customers, the company will be
successful

16. ESSENTIAL FACTORS OF PRODUCT DESIGN
Need
A design must be in response to individual or social
needs, which can be satisfied by the technological
status of the times when the design is to be prepared
Physical reliability
 A design should be convertible into material goods or
services, i.e., it must be physically realizable. The
technique for determining the physical reliability is
termed, design tree approach tree

17. CONT.….
Economic worthwhileness
The goods or services, described by a design, must have a
utility to the consumer which equals or exceeds the sum of the
total costs of making it available to it
Financial feasibility
The operations of designing, producing and distributing the
goods must be financially supportable, i.e., a design project
should be capable for being funded by suitable agencies or
people.
The method for assessment of financial feasibility could be
‘Net present value’ which states that the present worth of cash
flows in the project when added up during the useful life of the
product should be greater than the initial investment for the

18. CONT.…
Optimality
 The choice of a design concept must be optimal amongst the
available alternatives;
the selection of the chosen design concept must be optimal
among all possible design proposals. Optimal design, in theory,
strives to achieve the best or singular point derived by calculus
methods. In the context of optimization under constraints for
mechanical strength, minimum weight and minimum cost are
usually taken up as criteria for optimization.
Design criterion
 Optimality must be established relative to a design criterion
which represents the designer’s compromise among possibly
conflicting value judgements which include those of the

19. CONT.….
Morphology
 Design is progression from the abstract to the concrete. This
gives a chronologically horizontal structure to a design project.
The three phases of design proposed by Asimow [1] are:
Feasibility study phase, preliminary design phase, and detailed
design phase
Design process
 Design is an iterative problem-solving process. This gives a
vertical structure to each design phase. The iterative nature of
design is owing to feedback from existing design and
improvement with further information in the form of
technological, financial and creativity inputs

20. CONT.……
Sub problems
 During the process of solution of a design problem, a sub layer
of sub problems
appears; the solution of the original problem is dependent on
the solution of the sub problems
Reduction of uncertainty
 Design is derived after processing of information that results in
a transition from uncertainty, about the success or failure of a
design towards certainty. Each step in design morphology from
step (i) to step (x) enhances the level of confidence of the
designer.

21. CONT.…..
Economic worth of evidence
 Information gathering and processing have a cost that must be
balanced by the worth of the evidence, which affects the success
or failure of the design. Authentic information should be gathered
to make the design project a success. Today, information is
regarded as a resource which is as valuable as money, manpower
and material.
Bases for decision
 A design project is terminated when it is obvious that its failure
calls for its
abandonment. It is continued when confidence in an available
design solution is high enough to indicate the commitment of
resources necessary for the next phase.

22. CONT.…..
Minimum commitment
 In the solution of a design problem at any stage of the process,
commitments which will fix future design decisions must not be
made beyond what is necessary to execute the immediate solution.
This will allow maximum freedom in finding solutions to sub
problems at the lower levels of design. A model of design problem,
sub problems etc. is developed through a design tree
Communication
 A design is a description of an object and prescription for its
production; it will exist to the extent it is expressed in the available
modes of communication. The best way to communicate a design
is through drawings, which is the universal language of designers.