CHAPTER 2

DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES AND

ORGANIZATIONS
 Sequence
 Functions of organization that take part in a product
development

 Generic product development steps

 Four different categories of products

 Three categories of organizational structure of a firm

and strengths and weakness of each

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 What is Product & Product Development?

 Product
 Something sold by an enterprise to its customers

 Product development
 Set of activities beginning with the perception of a
market opportunity & ending in the production, sale
and delivery of a product.

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 Product Development Process

 Process:-
 A process is a sequence of steps that transforms a set
of inputs into a set of outputs.

 Product development process:-

 A product development process is the sequence of
steps or activities that an enterprise employs to
conceive, design, and commercialize a product.

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 Why a well-defined Development Process is
Useful?
A well defined process specifies / ensures the
following:-
 Quality assurance: A development process
specifies the phases a development project will
pass through and checkpoint along the way. QA
vs QC.

 Coordination: A clearly articulated development

process acts as a master plan that define the roles
of each of the players on the development team.

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 Continued
 Planning: Dev process defines / includes
milestones corresponding to the completion of
each phase. The timing of these milestones
anchors the schedule of the overall development
project.

 Management: Well defined dev process is a set

benchmark thus enables executives to asses
performance & problem areas by comparing and
tracking actual events with set benchmark.

 Improvement: Careful documentation and

ongoing review of an organization’s development
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helps to identify opportunities of improvement.
 Types of Product Development Process (Exhibit 2-5)

 Generic Product Development Process

 Spiral Product Development Process

 Complex system Development Process

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 Generic Product Development Process
 Generic Product Development Process:-
 Can be used in the following products:-
 Market pull product:- Team explore market opportunities to meet
customer needs.
 Technology push product:- Team begin with a new technology
and then find appropriate market.
 Platform products:- Team assumes that the new product will be
built around an established technological subsystems.
 Process-intensive product:- Characteristics of the product are
highly constrained by the production process.
 Customized product:- New products are slight variations of
existing configuration.
 High risk product:- Technical or market uncertainties create high
risks of failure.
 I/P to the process is mission statement and O/P of the
8 process is the product launch.
 Generic Product Development Process

 Spiral Product Development Process:-

 Can be used in the following product:-
 Quick Build Product:- Rapid modeling and prototyping involved
e.g software , cellular phone.
 Detail design, prototyping, and test activities repeated a number of
times.

 Complex system Development Process:-

 Can be used in the Complex systems:- Main system decomposed into
several sub systems and many components.

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 Phases of the Generic Development Process

 Planning: referred as phase zero.

 Begin with opportunity identification.
 Planning is the initial stage of deciding how to develop,
mass production, and market the new prototype.
 Team seek project approval and launch of the actual
product development process.
 Output of this phase is “ project mission statement” and it
serves as input to next phase. The mission statement
specifies “target market, business goals, key assumptions
& constraints.

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 Phases of the Generic Development Process

 Concept development:-
 Prior to this phase, the generated ideas have to go
through screening process to filter out the viable ones.
 The enterprise / business conducts a SWAT analysis to
identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
existing in the market.
 Market strategy is set out to identify the product’ target group,
which facilitates segmentation of the product 'market.
 Alternative concepts are generated.
 One or more concepts are selected for further development and
testing and subsequently for next phase.

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 Six Phases cont’d

 System-Level design:
 The system level design phase includes the defining of the Product
Architecture, decomposition of product into subassemblies /
subsystems and components.
 The O/P of this phase includes a geometric layout of a product, a
functional specification of each of the product’s subsystems and
preliminary flow diagrams for final product.
 Detail design:
 The detail design phase includes the complete specification of the
geometry, materials, and tolerances of all of the unique parts in the
product.
 Identification of all standard parts required to be purchased from the
suppliers.
 Critical issues can be fixed in the detail design phase.
 Materials selection
 Production cost (Full cost of the project)
 Robust performance
 Outcome of this phase is control documents.
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 Six Phases cont’d

 Testing and refinement:-

 The testing and refinement phase involves the construction
and evaluation of multiple preproduction versions of the
product.

 Alpha prototype:
 Made with production intent parts.
 Tested to determine whether the product will work as
designed and whether the product satisfies the key
customers needs.

 Beta prototype:
 Extensively evaluated internally and also tested by
customers in their own use environment.

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 Six Phases cont’d
 Production Ramp-up:-
 In this phase, Product is made using intended production
system.
 Purpose of the ramp-up to train work force and to workout
any remaining problems in production processes.
 Products produced during ramp-up are sometimes supplied to
preferred customers and carefully evaluated to identify any
remaining flaws.
 Transition from production ramp-up to ongoing production is usually
gradual.
 A post launch project review (commercial and technical) may occur
shortly after the launch and intended to identify ways to improve the
development process for future projects.

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The Generic Product Development
Process
 Concept Development Activities

 This phase demands more coordination among functions.

 Also known front end process.
 Development iteration is possible at any stage, based on
the new information and results learned.
 Concept development includes the following activities:-
 Identifying customer needs
 Establishing target specifications
 Concept generation
 Concept selection
 Concept testing
 Setting final specifications
 Project planning
 Economic analysis
 Benchmarking of competitive products
 Modeling and prototyping

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 Identifying customer needs

 The goal of this activity is to understand customers’ needs

and to effectively communicate them to the development
team.
 O/P of this step is a set of customer need statements.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Establishing target specifications

 Specifications provide a precise description of what a product

has to do.
 Translation of the customer needs into technical terms.
 Targets for the specifications are set early in the process.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Concept generation

 The goal of concept generation is to thoroughly explore the

space of product concepts that may address the customer
needs.
 Concept generation includes a mix of internal and external
search.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Concept selection

 Concept selection is the activity in which various product

concepts are analyzed and sequentially eliminated to identify the
most promising concepts.
 Concept selection usually requires several iterations.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Setting final specifications

 The target specifications set earlier in the process are revisited

after a concept has been selected and tested.

 The team must commit to specific values of the metrics

reflecting constraints inherent in the product concept, limitations
identified through technical modeling, and trade offs between
cost and performance.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Project planning

 The team creates a detailed development schedule, devises a

strategy to minimize development time, and identifies the
resources required to complete the project.

 Major results of the front-end activities are captured in a contract

book which contains the mission statement, the customer needs,
the detail of the selected concept, the product specifications, the
economic analysis of the product, the development schedule,
the project staffing, and the budget.

 The contract book serves to document the agreement between

the team and the senior management of the enterprise.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Economic analysis

 The team often with the support of a financial analyst, builds an

economic model for the new product.
 This model is used to justify continuation of the overall
development program and to resolve specific trade-off among,
for example, development costs and manufacturing costs.
 Economic analysis is an ongoing activity in the concept
development phase.
 Economic analysis is to be done before the project begin and
updated as more information become availabe.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Benchmarking of competitive products
 Benchmarking:- looking outward to examine how others
(competitors) achieve their performance level, and to
understand the processes they use.

 An understanding of competitive products is critical to successful

positioning of a new product and can provide a rich source of
ideas for the product and production process design.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Modeling and prototyping

 Every stage of the concept development process involves

various forms of models and prototypes.
 “proof-of-concept” models:- Help the development team to
demonstrate feasibility
 “form-only” models:- can be shown to customers to evaluate
ergonomics and style.
 Experimental test models:- can be used to set design
parameters for robust performance.

“Concept Development Activities”

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 Q&A

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