The Product Design

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Product Design and Service Design

Product design refers to the development of the concept or idea of a product in terms of specifications

which are required for transforming the idea into that product. These specifications are created keepingin mind the constraints of the production process, feasibility to produce and meeting the customer

expectations without sacrificing the quality. Product design involves activities like creating drawing and

specifications pertaining to sizes and tolerances and deciding on the type of materials to be used etc.

Characteristics of Good Design:- The characteristics of a well-designed products are:-

1.

Functionality:- While designing the most important consideration is the function that the

product is expected to perform. Products are designed to with a core objective and for

meeting a specific customer need. If the product is unable to meet that very need, the

whole purpose of introducing a new product is defeated e.g. mobile verbal

communication.

2.

Reliability:- It means the dependability on the performance of a product for a designated

period of time, without deterioration in the quality or performance of the product. While

designing a product, the life of the product which it should last is an important

consideration. A consumer expects a certain life span in the product.

3.

Producibility:- it can be defined as the possibility of producing the product in the required

quantity at a feasible cost. A product may be very well designed in terms of functionality

and appearance but if it is not produced in the required quantity and at a favourable cost, it

will not be successful in the market. Producibility includes number of operations that form

the manufacturing process, availability of the necessary materials technology requirements

etc.

4.

Quality:- It means conformance to specifications. A good design ensures the required quality

in a product. The materials and their specifications ascertained while designing play an

important role in making the product durable and reliable. Tolerances in the dimensions of

individual parts affect the final quality of the assembled product.

5.

Standardization and Simplification:- Standardization means use of minimum number of

parts to serve the maximum number of purpose, in order to achieve economy in

manufacture and to ensure operational efficiency and efficiency and effectiveness.


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Simplification is the process of making design simple. Complicating things which can be

made simple is only going to add to costs.

6.

Maintainability:- The product design should be such that maintaining it is simple and cost

effective in terms of repair or replacement of the defective part e.g. new automobile

tubeless tyres maintenance free inverter battery.

7.

Cost effective:- A products production cost gets determined at the designing stage. At the

designing stage, effective measures like standardization of parts and manufacturing process

and choice of input materials influence the cost of product.

Product Development Process:- The product development process consists of a series of activities

starting from idea generation and going up to commercial production.

(i)

Exploration:- This is the starting point where new ideas emerge from the sales force, whichis in direct contact with the customer. In addition, new idea may also be generated from

management, employees, shareholders, consultants or from study of foreign products and

markets, seminar papers, R & D laboratories, Govt. or university laboratories etc. example

google.

(ii)

Feasibility study:- At this stage, the new ideas generated are screened and the most

effective ones are finally selected. For scientific selection of the product, qualitative and

quantitative information needs to be consolidated keeping in new the organisations

objective and available facilities. All relevant technical and economic factors are analyzed at

this stage. Some of the questions considered before selecting an idea are:-

1.

What is the market potentiality of the idea?

2.

Is the idea technically feasible?

3.

Is the idea free from any intellectual property rights or patient regulations?

4.

What are the present and future raw material supply positions?

5.

To what extent are the existing production facilities and resource availability suitable to

commercialize the new ideas?

6.

What would be the amount of investment required and to what extent can the company

internally generate such as amount?

7.

Would there be adequate return on investment?

8.

If extent source need to be tapped has the cost of borrowings been taken into

consideration.


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From environment

Consumer

Competitions Suppliers

NEW PRODUCT

IDEAS

From Company

R&D group

Engineering Marketing

Market Research Technical Assessment

PRELIMINARY

PRODUCT DESGIN

FEASIBLITY

STUDY

Detailed

Engineering

PROCESS

PLANNING

PROTOTYPE

SAMPLE

MARKET TESTING

RAMP UP

COMMERCIALIZATION

IS PRODUCT

FEASIBLE? STOP


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(iii) Detailed engineering phase-Upon approval a new product project graduates to the detailed

engineering phase. Primary activities constituting this phase are the design and construction

of working sample, also the development of tools and equipment critical to the products

commercial production. If the prototype fails to deliver the deserved performance results,

necessary changes in the products design are made by the engineers and the tests are

repeated.

Once this is done, the firm shifts the development of the product to the next phase, which is

pilot manufacturing phase. During this phase, the individual components that were build

and tested on production equipment are assembled. Post assembling, these are tested as

unitary system in the factory. During this phase only the units that comprise the product are

also produced. It is important that during this stage all tools and equipment are in order and

all units that supply parts are ready for volume production. This point in the productsdevelopment brings the entire system together be it the design, engineering parts,

production supervisors, tools and equipments, assembly sequence or the operators and the

technicians.

(iv) Ramp up- The last phase of development where commercial production begins, is called

ramp-up. However volume of production increase, only when the organization develops the

confidence in its (and its suppliers) ability to execute consistent production as also the

ability of the marketing department to sell the product.

(v)

Commercialization:- This is the final stage of new product planning and it consists of

important decisions about whether to make or buy the products component parts and

activities such as developing production methods, activating distribution network,

integrating the new product with the organizationsnormal activity and finally achieving the

satisfactory sales volume and profitability.

Service Design: services vary on the amount of customer contact and in the intensiveness of labour

versus capital. Service technologies vary accordingly.

Customer contact:-Customer contacts occurs in 2 ways

First is the customersinvolvement in designing or customizing the service. In building a new home for

example, the customer can be intensively active on the design, working closely with an architect or the


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customer can opt for a standard design without any customizing. The other examples is

providing a standard coffee and tea from a coffee vending machine or a customer can choose from over

20 different verities of coffee and tea in a CCD outlet.

A second way customer contact occurs is in creating the services. Hair styling for example, is a high

contact process because the customer participates in creating the service. Wig and toupee repair is

often a low contact process.

We can use the degree of customer contact to classify and evaluate service organization and to

understand how they operate. By categorizing service continuum ranging from low to high contact, we

can better appreciate the tradeoffs between flexibility and efficiency of operations. Generally high

contact process technology is more flexible to accommodate the unique needs of diverse customer.

When flexibility is high, efficiency is low because the conversion process cannot be standardized. At the

low contact end of the continuum, the process technology can be less flexible because customer are

absent during the conversion process and consequently the operations can be oriental more towards

standardization and efficiency.

Labour intensive: Some services, such as nursings and teachingare labour intensive, whereas others

such as 24 hours automatic teller machine are capital intensive. These different services obviously

present contrasting operating problems. While employee scheduling and training are dominant

concerns for a labour- intensive service company, technological advancement and capital investment

are dominant concerns for capital intensive service company.

Service process Mix:- Combining the two dimensions-customer contact and labour intensiveness-

produces four distinctive types of services process technologies. Many service organisations fit clearly

into each cell of the matrix and they have different operation challenges and problems.

Quassi-Manufacturing (e.g. ATM Machine)- with low labour intensity and low customer contact, offers

rigidly standardized services, is very concerned with developing reliable delivery schedules and make

major capital equipment decision in a bureaucratized settings.

Mass Service (e.g city school system)- while still a system offering standardized services, are much more

involved with training, development and scheduling of the human resources so critical for successful

service delivery in this labour intensive conversion process.

Custom-shop service (e.g hospital) - must be capable of providing customized patient services with a

professional staff in a relatively capital-intensive conversion technologies that emphasize cost

containment and large capital investment decisions.


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The hallmark of professional services (e.g tutoring) is customized service through intensive interaction

b/w the customer and professional personnel. Since the professionals are governed by norms than by

organizational rules. The professionals skills in relating to the customerare essential.

Low Customer contact High customer contact

Differences between Service Design and Product Design

1. Products are generally tangible; Services are generally intangible. Consequently service

design often focuses more on intangible factors (e.g. peace of mind, ambiance) thandoes product design.

2.

In many instances services are created and delivered at the same time (e.g. a haircut, a

car wash). In such instances there is less latitude in finding and correcting errors before

the customer has a chance to discover them.

3. Services cannot be inventoried. This poses restrictions on flexibility and makes capacity

issues very important.

4. Services are highly visible to customers and must be designed with that in mind; this

adds an extra dimension to process design, one that is usually not present in product

design.5. Some services have low barriers to entry and exit. This places additional pressure on

service design to be innovative and cost effective.

6. Location is very important to service design, with convenience as a major factor. Hence

design of services and choice of location are often closely linked.

7. Service systems range from those with little or no customer contact to those that have a

very high degree of customer contact. For example

Quassi

manufacturing

Low cost airlines

Fast food Res.

ATM m/c

Service shop

Automobile garage

Large hospitals

Repair services

Mass serviceRetailing

Education

Wholesale business

Professional serviceLegal services

Beauty parlour

Personal taxation


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Software developmentLow customer contact

Automatic car wash - Low customer contact

Diet programme, Dance lessonsHigh customer contact

Self-service in supermarket - High customer contact

Service design for systems that have little or no customer contact is very much like product

design; whereas service design with high customer contact generally requires inclusion of the

service delivery package.

Documents

The Product Design