Concept Generation
Concept Generation
Concept Generation
1. Project Description and background: A description of the project, and what is the expected level of completion to be accomplished. A high-level system block diagram should be included to aid in presenting the overall concept.
2. Customer Needs: The customer needs and requirements should be listed including their relative importance and priority as completed in the class assignment. 3. Product Specifications: The customer needs are then mapped into project metrics, and preliminary values assigned. Use a Needs/Metrics table to show the linkage of customer needs and measurable metrics. You should include preliminary target values for each specification. A complete FSD should also
include a description of each metric and the reason that the team has chosen this measure for the project.
4. Linking of the Project Requirements and Product Specifications: Each critical customer need must have an associated product metric to insure that these critical program and customer requirements are being met. This can easily be shown on the Needs/Metrics chart illustrated in class. 5. Summary: As with any written document, you need to include a summary section which ties all the other sections together and reviews the significant
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Concept Generation.
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Concept Generation
The idea of doing a structured process to generate design concepts is one of the most difficult concepts to teach. What makes it so hard? Have you ever done a task only to find out later that there was an easier way? Why did you choose the harder method? What are some example of breakthrough, out of the box thinking?
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Mission Statement
Identify Customer Needs Establish Target Specs Generate Product Concepts Select a Product Concept Test Product Concept Set Final Specs
Development Plan
Plan Downstream Development
Perform Economic Analysis Benchmark Competitive Products Build and Test Models and Prototypes
Concept Development
Exhibit 2 Chapter 3 Ulrich & Eppinger
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Concept Generation
Why emphasize early concept generation?
Thorough exploration of alternatives early in the development process greatly reduces the likelihood that the team will stumble upon a superior concept late in the development process or that a competitor will introduce a product with dramatically better performance than the product under development.
Ulrich and Eppinger
Concept generation answers the question of how the product will satisfy the customer needs as mapped into the functional specifications.
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Chosen Solution
Target Specification Concept generation
Concept screening
Concept scoring Concept testing
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What are some of the problems you may encounter w/o a structured approach to concept generation?
Wont consider many alternatives. Influenced by the most dominant person on the team. Dont consider product concepts from other companies or unrelated products. Team doesnt get a buy in to the final proposal. May miss entire an entire category of solutions.
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X =
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Energy
Nails
Store Nails
Isolate Nail
Driven Nail
Initiation action
Sense initiation
Trigger tool
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In-class exercise #1
Develop a decomposition function diagram for one of the design subproblems for your project. What would be some of the inputs and outputs.
inputs Functional description outputs
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HP inkjet printers
An ink that could be boiled to produce droplets. Colored inks.
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Search Externally
Interview lead users. Consult industry experts. Search Patents. Search published literature. Benchmark related products. For you Concept Generation and Selection document, I want you to show evidence of at least two areas where you have researched some external inputs for concept generations.
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Search internally
Use your personal and team knowledge and creativity to generate solution concepts. Some guidelines for generating concepts:
Suspend judgment. Dont be quick to jump to conclusions. Generate a lot of ideas. Dont spend time evaluating ideas, just capture them. Welcome out of the box ideas. Dont worry about feasibility during the initial brainstorming. Use graphical and visual methods to capture ideas. Quick drawings and sketches are great.
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Systematic exploration
There are two tools that can help the team in navigating through the maze of concept fragments: 1. The concept classification tree, and, 2. The concept combination table. Concept classification tree helps to divide the solutions into independent categories, And the concept combination table helps in the selection of possible fragments.
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Systematic exploration
concept classification tree
Fuel-air system Explosive System Oil pressure system
Chemical
Hydraulic Store or Accept energy Electrical
Pneumatic
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Step 3 is to link concept fragments into complete solutions. This also shows where more evaluation or exploration is necessary.
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Accumulate Energy
Spring
Single impact
Multiple impact
Push nail
Rail gun
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Accumulate Energy
Spring
Single impact
Multiple impact
Push nail
Rail gun
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Concept Generation-Summary
Develop innovative solutions that will meet the target specifications that have been determined by the needs of the customer. Find design concepts that will differentiate our solution from the competition. Insure that you havent overlooked some critical areas of the design.
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Homework assignment
Complete the FSD. Due on Thursday Jan 26th. Link it to your team management page and email a copy to me. Email me with >5 concept alternatives for your actual project. We will discuss these in class on Thursday. Information for the next lecture is in chapter 7, Concept Selection in Ulrich and Eppinger
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Knowledge
You Don't Know Conscious Incompetent
Information that needs to be researched. You fill find people with the required knowledge. You will avoid making assumptions without data
Awareness
You Know
Conscious Competent
Facts and data Past experience Observations BOFs
Unconscious Competent
Skills you possess even though you don't know it Data you know that you don't know you will need.
Unconscious Incompetent
This is the area to avoid. This is where you get really surprised. Don't assume that not knowing won't hurt you.
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