PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Presented By: Perumalsamy

INTRODUCTION  Product development means making changes in the size, design, color, shape, characteristics, packing etc. of the product.  New product development may be done to develop an item to complete with a particular product or may be done to improve an already established product.  Why develop Products?  Product development is essential to any business that must keep up with market trends and changes.  To maintain competitive advantage  To fill gap in the market  Changing environment creates new demands and needs

Product Development Process  Product development process consists of a structured and orderly set of activities.  These activities repeat at periodic intervals when the company feels the need for bringing new products.  Therefore, these activities could be considered to be going through an endless cycle.  Broadly product development process consists of four stages.

Typical Product Development Process

CONCEPT GENERATION  It contains feasibility study and idea generation.  New products and services are the outcome of the need to close the gap that exists in the market with respect to the customers' needs.  Therefore, understanding of customer needs very important. Once there is some clarity on this aspect, the next step is to translate the need into products and services.  This activity requires good innovation skills to develop unique products and services. Several alternative methods and tool are available of fulfilling the customer need. Feasibility refers to several dimensions.  These include, the technological feasibility to manufacture and deliver as per design; marketing feasibility to create a market, distribute, and sustain maintenance.

 cost feasibility; and the feasibility of customer acceptance. Feasibility is not strictly evaluated at this stage in a detailed fashion.  Example: To providing good quality music to customers at a very affordable cost. Fulfilling this need could be done in several ways.  One method is to work on the quality and cost of sound reproduction devices such as CD players and bring a product that offers attractive value along this dimension.  The other option is to work on an alternative technology such as MPEG devices and software and provide the same music in a downloadable fashion.  The third option is to provide a mechanism of a digital cupboard in which every customer can store his favourite albums in a virtual manner and a music album is pulled out of the digital cupboard and listened to the customer.  Each of these alternatives results in different feasibilities, cost, quality and other dimensions used to fulfilling the need for high quality music.

DESIGN  It contains, Preliminary design,process planning and cost planning.  Once product feasibility is established. The next step in the process is to put more details into the concept.  Preliminary design :The design phase of the product development process is focused on these aspects. During this stage, detailed specifications are first drawn about the product. For instance, it is important to fix the weight, the material, surface finish, and the tolerances required.  Once these details are arrived they provide the necessary inputs to explore how exactly these requirements could be met using the machines and other production resources available in the organisation.  The process planning activity provides these details of the product being designed. Product specifications and the process planning decisions are required for cost estimation of the proposed design of the process. At the end of these three steps, it is possible to make an assessment of the feasibility of the design.

PROCESS PLANNING Machining features Design Work piece Selection Process Selection Tool Selection Feed, Speed Selection Operation Sequencing Setup Planning Part Programming

 An initial design may not be feasible for several reasons. the capability of the existing resources may not be enough to manufacture the product as per the required specifications.  In some cases the capability exists, the cost of the design infeasible to find a good market.  It is also possible that even when the cost and the process feasibility are there, the product may turn out to be uninteresting from a customer perspective.  Finally, the availability of raw material for the product or skilled labour may be doubtful in certain cases. Therefore, during the design phase, the product goes through several Steps before the design is approved. Several entities are involved in the decision making at this stage. These include, the design department, the finance department, the production planning department, and the marketing departments.  At the end of this exercise, the few potential ideas are thoroughly analysed with a greater level of detail provided by the design team, and one alternative is selected for commercial production.

Development  The third stage of the product development process is the physical development of the product. During this stage, the details arrived at on the drawing board are translated into reality.  During the development phase, a few pieces of the product are manufactured for the purpose of testing. The efficiency and effectiveness of the manufacturing process are not good at starting time. Moreover, dedicated equipment and assured sources of supply are not established at that stage.  Usually, a prototype is built for extensive testing and fine-tuning of design specifications. Moreover, detailed manufacturing specifications, specific methods of manufacture, assembly and testing are established during this phase.  Just as design specifications undergo a few process before the specifications are firmed up, similar efforts are required at this stage to create and firm up the manufacturing specifications.  Design changes are made on the basis of findings from multiple controlled experiments and product usage.

Production  The last stage of the product development process used to the transfer of known-how to the production personnel and establishing the system for volume production.  The product development cycle described above is fairly representative of a majority of situations faced in practice. These steps are normally found even in the case of development of software products and services.  In this step the product is checked by R&D team for further development of the product  The only difference in the case of development of software products and services is the specific set of activities undertaken at each stage.

Product Development Funnel with Stages and Gates

 Product Development Funnel indicating hypothetical product development process that is scheduled to launch the commercial version of the product 24 months from the start of the process.  In this example, concept generation is expected to take 7 months. The other stages of the product development process take 5 months, 8 months and 4 months, respectively.  The number of ideas narrow down as we move from left to right. The entire process could be thought of as a funnel filtering ideas as time goes by. Similarly, the completion of each stage is a milestone that could potentially trigger the management to filter the available ideas, assess the suitability of the current efforts and make the necessary modifications. Therefore, each stage represents an opportunity for review and mid-course correction.

ORGANIZATION FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT  Several functional areas are directly involved in the process. Marketing plays a main role in the process by providing valuable information with respect to customer needs that are otherwise not addressed. It contains  Customer, Marketing  Design  Planning  Procurement, suppliers  Production  Finance

Organisation Structure for Product Development Process