Design Agility: Increasing your Ability to Adapt to Change

By BARB SCHMITZ | Published: DEC 13, 2011

One of the most prominent trends in today’s markets is the reality that the customer is now king. Consumers are demanding ever more innovative products that are tailored specifically to their needs, dictating the types of features and functionality they require, and as a result, are driving the direction of many different types of products.

As the result, the ability to respond quickly to changes is key to surviving in today’s turbulent and competitive markets, whether you’re making cars, cell phones or other consumer products. Bottom line: Product design today must be agile, iterative, and flexible. Manufacturers must strive to offer greater product customization or variety, but continue to keep unit costs low.

Another factor that increases the need for design agility is the prevalence of collaborative design. Product design now requires input from many divergent groups within a company, including sales and marketing, logistics, accounting and finance, manufacturing, engineering, Quality, and possibly even customers and suppliers. These collaborative team members weigh in and offer input throughout all the various stages of design—from concept through to production—so the ability to respond to change requests quickly, nimbly and continuously is essential.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” –Charles Darwin

Design agility, by definition, is a manufacturer’s ability to react quickly to sudden, unpredicted changes in customer demands or market changes for products. Flexibility is essential to respond to changes that are inevitable during the development cycle as customers change their minds, markets shift, and new technologies arise. Design agility requires that manufacturers design products that can either be quickly evolved or can be customized to meet customers’ specified requirements and changes in the market.

Companies can increase their ability to respond to such changes in product requirements bydeveloping families of products (often referred to as product platforms) that are designed for modularity and reconfigurability. These modular product structures enable manufacturers to adapt a product late in the design cycle or in manufacturing—or even in distribution—to better suit the needs of an individual consumer with as little disruption as possible.

By doing so, they are better able to quickly respond to changing market conditions or customer requests by making slight modifications to base or modular designs to create newly customized products. Manufacturers also need to be able to reconfigure processes or systems to accommodate sudden changes in product designs.

Product development processes can decrease flexibility

Many strategies put in place to foster product innovation may actually thwart manufacturers’ efforts to increase design agility. Phased product development processes that emphasize heavy up-front planning coupled with established project management methodologies promote an organized plan-your-work, work-your-plan approach to product design.

At the beginning, the project has complete flexibility but by the end of the initial planning or concept phase, the project budget, schedule and product requirements (design intent) are established and approved. From here on, the design process has restricted flexibility. While these approaches have their advantages, they can also make it difficult to make changes midstream in development.

While last-minute design changes are inevitable, this staged approach requires designers and engineering to anticipate what those changes might be during the planning phase. While this approach keeps design projects on schedule and within budget, it can also hamper the design team’s ability to deal with design changes as they arise, which can often be later in the design cycle.

Parametric modelers can facilitate design agility by making it easier to deal with last-minute product changes. When designs are created in a history-based parametric CAD system, the user can make a requested change, and then leverage the model’s parametric interdependencies to propagate changes throughout the rest of the model. If, however, the user making the change doesn’t understand the underlying model structure or if the change lies outside the tolerable parametric ranges, issues can arise. Often this requires engineers to start from scratch.

Direct modeling systems can make it much easier to deal with these last-minute design changes. With direct modelers, users can make changes to the model at any time, though design intent can be lost. A hybrid approach that utilizes both parametric and direct modeling tools can help design teams by providing them with flexibility and the design intelligence provided by parametric interdependencies.

Consumers in Front Seat of Driving Product Innovation

By BARB SCHMITZ | Published: DEC 5, 2011

Traditionally product development was viewed as an activity proposed and executed by manufacturers. Customers were not thought of as being an integral part of the process, but merely consumers of the products. Today, however, that paradigm has shifted and it’s the consumers who are dictating the types of new products being developed and sold throughout the world. Not only are consumers playing a vital role in innovation, but are often developing products on their own.

Recent research conducted by MIT’s Management of Technology and Innovation shows that consumers today are collectively generating massive amounts of product innovation, sending out a wake-up call for companies striving to succeed in today’s highly competitive global markets. Three first-ever studies looked at the role of consumers in product innovation in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Japan.

All three surveys found that in all three nations, millions of citizens innovate to create and modify consumer products to better fit their needs. One reason for this is that it is getting progressively easier to design and make what they want for themselves. The cost of computer-based design tools is rapidly dropping, and today many adequate ones are available on the Web at zero cost, while the sophistication and user-friendliness of these tools are rapidly rising.

Once designs are created, recent advents in rapid manufacturing techniques help consumers manufacture their products. The cost of 3D printers has plummeted in price, making the technology accessible to a much wider group of users. Different companies specialize in the various techniques—from laser cutting to 3D printing—used to create high-quality parts or entire products one at a time, and do so at very reasonable prices.

The study showed that while many consumers are innovating new products, they rarely attempt to protect their innovations from imitators. Fellow consumers, however, do adopt a significant number of these innovations. What does this mean to manufacturers? These findings mean that companies that make consumer products have an unexpected “front end” of free innovative designs to serve as important feedstock to their own innovation pipelines in a wide variety of markets.

Product developers must think about how to reorganize their product development processes to accept and build upon prototypes developed by consumers. They need to take a close look at how they can adapt their current idea generation and concept design processes to incorporate the ideas of consumers and add these ideas to the innovation pipeline. They must also determine how to identify promising consumer-generated innovations that are gaining traction among groups of consumers.

Earlier research on user innovation has found that in both consumer and business-to-business markets, some users—termed “lead users”—are much more likely to develop commercially promising innovations than the average customer. Tested methods exist to identify these lead users, and companies can download the training materials they need from the Web at no cost.

So what’s the take-home message here? Companies must support user innovation. It is, after all, innovation that ultimately distinguishes them from their competitors and drives revenue.  Look for ways to interact with consumers by creating or frequenting consumer community websites or creating innovation contests to generate new product ideas from customers. Create documented, open interfaces to support modifications to products and “developers’ toolkits” to assist further.

The costs of consumer innovation are dropping due to better and cheaper design tools, better and cheaper Internet-based communication and group formation, and better and cheaper prototyping facilities. It behooves any manufacturer to not take advance of this paradigm shift by harnessing and leveraging consumer-driven innovation. Put the processes in place now to let your customers drive your product innovation efforts into the future.

Image by Ben McLeod

Rally the Troops: Getting Your Team Ready for 3D CAD

By BARB SCHMITZ | Published: NOV 21, 2011

When an organization makes the decision to implement any new technology, it often requires changes in established procedures, processes, and user behavior. Before implementing 3D CAD for the first time, organizations should map out their current design processes, assess the needs of their engineers, and establish the objectives for transitioning to 3D CAD. After evaluating current processes for design, modeling and data management, management should outline the areas of improvement in process, workflow and training requirements.

Organizations also must thoroughly evaluate several critical areas: processes (approaches to implementation), organization (ability to support implementation and the design process), technology (tools to support implementation and the design process), knowledge management (capturing and promoting best practices), and performance management (the ability to measure results).

A great way to maximize your investment in your CAD system is to take advantage of all the training and support services offered by your vendor. No one understands the underlying functionality of your CAD system more than its developer, so making use of its training, often offered at no charge, as well as its support offerings, will speed implementations and help resolve problems faster. This support might be offered directly through the vendor or through a value-added reseller (VAR).

Software vendors have vast amounts of experience deploying, training and optimizing their 3D CAD software at companies representing nearly every industry. Their “lessons learned” through years of experience successfully implementing CAD software and integrating it with existing systems and processes can greatly facilitate customers’ adoption of 3D CAD, as opposed to manufacturers attempting to do their own implementations with little or no such experience.

Transitioning a team of users to 3D CAD takes time, training, and patience, but the potential payoff of faster design cycles and decreased development costs will make the change to 3D well worth it.  Placing trust in your vendor or VAR to help your troops transition to 3D and having a proactive plan in place prior to implementation will help speed training periods, reduce errors, decrease rework, and boost productivity.

Let’s take a look at a few best practices for companies to follow to prepare their teams for 3D CAD implementations.

Training

Enlist outside help. According to the study, Best Practices for Migrating from 2D to 3D CAD by the Aberdeen Group, “best-in-class” companies are 22 times more likely than the Industry Average to send employees to third-party run training programs.

Take advantage of vendor-provided training. Most vendors offer a variety of training options, some at no cost, including traditional classroom training, self-paced online training, and online access to libraries of learning material and tutorials. Managers can enroll engineering teams in on-demand training so they can learn at their own pace.

Keep it simple. When conducting in-house training for updates or new functionality, keep training materials simple and straightforward. Concentrate on simple exercises that are easy enough to understand but demonstrate the concept clearly. Save before-and-after cases of your models or parts so you can easily demonstrate step-by-step.

Timing is everything. If training is done too early, employees forget what they’ve learned before they get a change to use it; if done too late, they become frustrated and bad practices develop.

Organizational Changes

Determine support options. When you purchase 3D CAD software, find out what type of support options are available to your team. Many vendors will provide customers with access to the company’s knowledge base, free webinars, online tutorials, telephone support, 24/7 Web-based technical support, including proactive alerts and access to Tech Tips Webcasts.

Add a dedicated help desk. Having a centralized help center ensures that all issues during implementation are given the appropriate level of visibility and attention.

Establish best practices. Knowledge management is key to identifying and promoting best modeling practices. Creating part and drawing templates, and material, part, and assembly profile libraries speeds up repetitive processes. Make best practices easier to follow by leveraging “start parts” that contain standard company parameters.

Upgrade hardware. CAD management must carefully consider if their hardware infrastructure is adequate for 3D modeling. 3D CAD tools often require network upgrades. The CAD files can be very large and running the 3D CAD applications can consume a large amount of memory so upgrading computers and purchasing high-end graphics cards will greatly increase performance.

Appoint an in-house expert. According to the Aberdeen study, one of the top strategies for improving the use of 3D CAD was to identify an internal technical expert. This ensures that the majority of the staff can get a basic level of training while the expert can complete more in-depth training and become a resource for the remainder of the staff.

Provide central access to data. As more data is created, the need for centralized data storage via data management and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems is essential to ensure all users can access the data they need. Also facilitates version control.

Image by poncнo☭penguιn

Unraveling the Complexity of Today’s Products

By BARB SCHMITZ | Published: NOV 16, 2011

Nearly every product today, from cars and phones to washing machines, contains some sort of embedded computing technology. Customers are increasingly yearning for technology-enabled products. Smart phones, computing tablets, electronic navigation systems, Wi-Fi-enabled TVs, and a slew of other tech-enabled products offer consumers convenience, portability, and personalization at very reasonable prices, thanks to increased competition among manufacturers.

Consider these daunting statistics. Over the past five years, the average number of tech-enabled engine control units in new vehicles has grown from 20 to 80. In the mobile phone industry, the number of IT-based updates per year is approximately 40, double the number from 2000.

As the complexity of products increase, so does the task of developing them. The mounting pressure to cut time to market while also keeping prices low adds to the challenges faced by manufacturers worldwide today.   The growing demand for these tech-heavy products creates a struggle for manufacturers who are trying to keep costs low amid fast-evolving technologies and the continual pressure for product upgrades.

Traditional product development was driven largely by hardware considerations. Today’s complex products are dependent upon the effective integration of multiple hardware and software components. Software design involves strings of code that are pieced together in interconnected layers. The IT architecture underlying new product designs today, therefore, is much more complex. In products that are controlled by on-board microprocessors, sensors and processors guide their function, not mechanical components.

Manufacturers accustomed to managing the development of their hardware need to learn new processes and metrics for managing the development of software. Hardware typically involves much less uncertainty about how the components of a system work together: something connects or it doesn’t. Software development involves shades of gray. Because embedded development requires expertise in software and in hardware engineering and physics, best practice includes the use of cross-functional teams of experts and development methodologies that apply common models and simulation tools.

Successfully developing these tech-enabled, complex products requires an integrated approach that addresses a number of important characteristics. The architecture should be modular in nature, allowing sections to be stored and applied in different or future products. It should be built on standards, providing for easier integration, and be configurable so one system can meet many different customer requirements. Finally, it should be updatable, allowing new features and functions to added without having to discard large parts of previous releases.

Product development teams creating complex products should continually look for ways to simplify designs. Ask if a certain desired feature is something that customers would use regularly. If not, consider leaving it out. If the design seems overly complex, teams should not be afraid to start over and determine if the design can be streamlined to reduce its complexity. This not only decreases developments costs and design cycle time, but can also reduce the complexity of using the product. If a product is too complex and the learning curve is to high, adoption will be low.

Efficient and effective collaboration among those tasked with developing these complex products—engineering, marketing, concept design, and others—is critically important. This interaction helps IT-and engineering development teams balance what the market demands in a feature set against what the business side requires in costs and cycle times—and keeping it all within the realm of what’s technically possible.

Close collaboration also helps to anticipate where design changes might occur since changes made to one portion of complex multi-dimensional designs have ripple effects that can affect adjacent portions. Carefully and collaboratively organizing the architecture of these designs is vital to isolating the effects of design changes. By involving all those who are likely to initiate changes in the design—sales, marketing, purchasing, Quality, manufacturing, and engineering—you can help predict where those design changes will occur and design the underlying product architecture accordingly.

Because of the great complexity involved in the design of these tech-enabled products, the implementation of a product lifecycle management (PLM) system is vital. PLM systems help organizations by managing the interdependencies of these various subsystems (software and hardware) on each other, facilitating the collaboration between the multiple disciplines involved in the design, and tracking the change process.

Image  by Tom Held

Voice of the Customer (VoC) in Product Design

By LINDSEY CHRISTENSEN | Published: JAN 19, 2012

Building a new product can be a great creative process – or a flop. It’s easy to “geek out” on cool functions, details, or designs, losing sight of the customer’s needs. By doing the initial research to understand the Voice of the Customer (VoC)  for any potential product, companies can save headaches, money, and time. VoC is a widely used yet somewhat ambiguous term. Bruce Temkin is a VoC specialist who defines the voice of the customer as

A systematic approach for incorporating the needs of customers into the design of [products].

Even when VoC is understood, sometimes incorporating customer needs into the company culture to keep products fresh and updated can be daunting. Here are some methods to consider when incorporating VoC into the design process:

-          Relationship tracking, such as on-site surveys, provides a scorecard that can be easily understood and disseminated throughout the company.

-          Interaction monitoring so ALL interaction with the customer is recorded and assessed.

-          Continuous listening, such as listening in at call centers, speaking with customers, reading inbound emails, and visiting customer sites, provides valuable real-world insight.

-          Project infusion keeps the customer included in the actual design process. While this may seem like a no-brainer, consider opportunities to engage the customer earlier.

-          Periodic immersion, where all employees interact directly with the customer, provides the opportunity to question the status quo of the product.

In this episode of The Product Design Show, Vince and Allison share additional tips and techniques to obtain and incorporate VoC into your product designs. Employing these tips and using design solutions like Creo, which empowers you to collaborate directly with marketing and customers, greatly improves your ability to successfully incorporate VoC into your product development.