Modernizing Product Development Processes: Guide for Engineers

Product lifecycles have shortened due to competition, rapidly changing markets, emerging technology, and regulation. Modernizing Product Development Processes: Guide for Engineers provides a foundation to focus on giving engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators a guide to developing products with a new approach instead of a traditional product development cycle.Using the fundamental pillars of this book, the authors demonstrate how to bridge the gap in today's product development cycle to improve "time to market" needs in a fast-paced environment. These pillars include: - Learning from failures and doing - Harnessing creativity (out-of-the-box thinking) - Front loading (develop concepts early) - Explore multiple possible solutions - Technology/Manufacturing readiness level - Modularity (integrate common solutions) In addition, the authors prepare engineers to scale up production to meet customer demands in a dynamic environment by demonstrating how to establish strategies and road maps with a stage gate approach focused on harnessing creativity to build concepts/technologies in early phases. In today's era of innovation, rapid technological growth, and high consumer demand, engineers must adapt and deliver products with reasonable, engineered solutions and this book shows them how.

Table of Contents:
Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Chapter 1 Product Development the Gap 1 Introduction 1 Gaps in Product Development 3 Product Development Steps 5 Business Case 7 Time to Market of New Technology (Speed) 8 Knowledge of the Potential Market 9 Ways We Work Now and New Ways to Meet the Gaps 11 Organization and Process Assets 11 Supporting Learning the Emergent Technology 12 Support Application of the Emergent Tech 12 A Rapidly Changing Environment 13 Adjusting to the Rapidly Changing Environment 14 Areas of Action 16 Limitations of the Traditional Way of Working 16 What Are the Limitations? 17 Generation Dynamics and High Customer Expectations 18 Difference between Customer Expectations and Needs 19 Why Should You Know and Meet the Expectations of Your Customers? 19 Factors Influencing Customer Expectations 20 How Companies Can Meet Customer Expectations 21 Product Generation Dynamics that Meet High Customer Expectations 22 Increasing Sensitivity to Customer Needs Changes 22 Reducing the Product Generation Cycle Time 24 Forecasting 25 Conclusion 26 References 27 Contents vi Contents Chapter 2 Learning 31 Product Development Is Learning 31 What Is Learning? 32 Benefit of Learning Fast 36 Individual Learning 37 Team Learning 37 Benefits of Team Learning in an Organization 38 Agile Overview 39 Learning Environment 39 Benefits of Controlled Failure 40 Why Push to the Edge Excluding Previously Thought to Be Constraints? 40 Learning by Discovering Boundaries 40 What We Do Not Know and Assumptions 43 Calculated Risk 43 Experiential Learning 44 Fail Fast 44 Time to Market 46 Failing Is Learning 47 How this Works 47 Delay Deciding 48 Exploration and Experimentation 51 What Do We Know? 51 How Do We Find Out? 51 Biases 52 Simulation and Models 53 Model 56 Design of Experiments 58 References 58 Chapter 3 More Than Engineering 61 Creativity 61 Importance 62 The Myriad of Small Things 67 Platform Thinking 67 Creativity in a Smaller Organization 67 How to Harness Creativity 68 Creative Tools 75 References 82 viiContents Chapter 4 Front Loading 85 Front-Load the Product Development Process 85 Front Loading Product Development 88 What Does Front-Load Mean? 88 System Dynamics: Investigating Front-Load Effects 89 Customer Involvement 90 Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies for Product Realization 97 Configuration Management Is a Key Product Management Area in 3-D Printing 98 Product Performance, Function, and Physical Attributes 99 References 100 Chapter 5 Readiness Level 103 Maturity 103 Technology 104 Concept Decision Matrix 105 Manufacturing Reviews 106 Manufacturing Risk Analysis 108 Manufacturing 4.0 110 Maturity Models 114 Reasons for TRL 117 Technology Readiness Levels 120 TRL and Verification 125 Reasons for MRL 128 Manufacturing Dimensions 130 Manufacturing Readiness Level 132 References 135 Chapter 6 The Right Solution 137 Determine Solution 137 Why Wait? 137 Decision-Making and Risk 139 Build Product Knowledge 140 Set-Based Development and Concurrent Engineering 142 Right Sizing—Right Timing 147 Constraints and Boundary Conditions 149 viii Contents Product and Manufacturing Evaluation 149 Customer and Product Samples 152 Evaluation Approaches 154 References 158 Chapter 7 Benefits of Multiuse and Reuse 161 Modularity 161 What Is Modularity? 161 Benefits of Modularity 165 Software Modularity 168 Applications of Modularity 168 Road Map and Strategy 169 Establishing Requirements and Boundary Conditions 171 Manufacturability and Serviceability 172 Problem-Solving 174 Improved Quality 176 References 182 Chapter 8 System of Systems 185 Systems Engineering 185 What Is Systems Engineering? 187 Fault Tree Analysis 192 Function Point Analysis 194 Areas of Improvement 195 Integrated Development 197 Compare and Contrast 197 INCOSE 198 Manufacturing 198 Configuration Management 199 Verification and Validation 203 References 206 Index 209 About the Authors 215