The FSD should have the following information:

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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Concept Development Phase

Phase 1 Concept Development Phase 2 Phase 3 System-Level Detail Design Design Phase 4 Testing and Refinement Phase 5 Production Ramp-up

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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Iterative Process of Concept Generation

Chosen Solution
Target Specification Concept generation

Concept screening
Concept scoring Concept testing

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Advantages of Early Concept Generation

Reduce the likelihood of costly problems later in the development process.
Early concept generation is a very affordable way of looking at a lot of alternatives. Develops confidence in the team that you are not going to be surprised later on.
A product solution without an alternative is not an acceptable solution-Winter 2012 7

 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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Home Depot Theorem

Time spent in Project Planning Complexity of the problem

X =

Distance to the nearest Home Depot store Complexity of the problem

Home Depot Corollary

Time spent on the actual Project

Distance to the nearest Home Depot store

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Concept Generation is a 5 step process

1. Clarify the problem. Break it down into sub-problems, and prioritize. 2. Search externally for existing solutions = BOFs. 3. Search internally, using individual and group resources. 4. Explore systematically, using concept fragments. 5. Reflect and evaluate. This is not necessarily a linear process, it is usually iterative.

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 Step 1 Clarify the problem

Start with the Customer needs analysis and Functional Specs as inputs limit the scope of the problem. Dont try to boil the ocean. Prioritize the critical subsystems where you can differentiate your design. You will only have a few areas where you will need to apply the formal process. Be sure to list the critical assumptions you are making about the problem.

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 Decomposition of design concepts

The goal of problem decomposition is to help identify the few critical functions for your design. Every Product Function has a series of inputs and outputs that describe the behavior of the function. inputs Functional description outputs

Take a systems approach to design

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 Hand held Nailer

The design team decomposed the problem into several subproblems: Energy Source, Material (nails), Initiate action
Store or Accept External energy Convert Energy to Translational energy Apply Translational Energy to nail

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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 Step 2 Search Externally

Be a pirate! Take the best ideas that others have developed and build on them. You dont have to do everything perfectly. It only takes a couple of areas of differentiation to have a success in the market.
What technology allowed Honda to become a leader in transportation vehicles.
Reliable engines.

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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 Step 3 Search internally

Be careful to avoid assuming you know more than you do about a subject. Be careful to not over-simplify a problem For every complex problem there is a simple, easy-to-understand, wrong answer.

Complex problems usually have complex solutions

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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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 Step 4 Explore Systematically

At this point the team should have a collection of concept fragments solutions to the subproblems. The goal of systematic exploration is to synthesize a complete solution from the concept fragments. The problem is that not all fragments will work together in a final solution space. Your job is to come up with practical concepts from all the pieces.

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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

Wall outlet Batteries Fuel Cell

Pneumatic

External air system

Internal air system

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 Concept classification tree

What are we trying to accomplish with the tree?
Prune less promising branches quickly. Identify independent approaches to the problem. Find where gaps may exist in the concept fragments. Refine the thought process for a particular branch.

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 Concept combination table

This is a tool to link fragments into complete solutions. The first step is to identify the general functional diagram for the anticipated solution.
Convert Energy to translational energy

Accumulate Translational energy

Apply Translational energy to nail

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 Concept combination tables

Step 2 is to put all concept fragments into a column of the combination table. This helps to identify if concept fragments are missing or redundant.

Step 3 is to link concept fragments into complete solutions. This also shows where more evaluation or exploration is necessary.

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 Concept combination tables

Step 1- add fragments to the table
Convert Electrical energy to translational energy Apply translational energy to nail

Accumulate Energy

Rotary motor with transmission Linear Motor

Spring

Single impact

Moving Mass Solenoid

Multiple impact

Push nail
Rail gun

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 Concept combination tables

Step 2- connect fragments into solutions
Convert Electrical energy to translational energy Apply translational energy to nail

Accumulate Energy

Rotary motor with transmission Linear Motor

Spring

Single impact

Moving Mass Solenoid

Multiple impact

Push nail
Rail gun

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 Concept combination tables

As you can see, there are a lot of combinations available. (4 x 2 x 3) Many obviously dont make sense and can be quickly eliminated. However, you often find a new idea by looking at the possible combinations of concept fragments. Remember, this is an iterative process, you may have to go back to square one quite often.

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Step 5 Reflect and Evaluate

1. Are you confident that the solution space has been adequately explored? 2. Do you have alternate functional diagrams? 3. Can you decompose the problem in an alternate way? 4. Have you considered external sources? 5. Have everyones ideas been considered and integrated into the process?

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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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The Competency Matrix

You know

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

You Don't Know

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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