HO2 - L7: Design tools Flashcards
What happens when a business has one idea and only develop one idea?
- The product will exhibit little innovation and be a bit predictable and boring.
- The competition will have thought of that idea too - product is probably already on the market and you will gain no competitive advantage.
- The product will not satisfy the needs of the customer for long, if at all.
How can a concept be represented?
- Verbally
- Textual descriptions
- Sketches
- Paper/ clay models
- Block diagrams
Define Brainstorming.
Basic method of generating concepts.
Best done w/ group but can be used by individual designer.
What are the rules of Brainstorming?
- Record all ideas
- Generate as many ideas as possible
- Think wild, silly, impossible ideas
- The important thing is maybe not the idea itself but where it leads our thought to.
- Do not judge or evaluate any idea yet.
Why is screening important?
- Systematic rapid screening eliminates less promising ideas.
- Screening: Business/market analysis, technical/operations analysis and financial/cost analysis.
- Must be effective because subsequent stages are expensive.
- Products that are to be abandoned - should be abandoned in the development cycle.
What is Preliminary design?
- Specify components of package (product/service/structure).
- Preliminary bill of materials.
- It defines process to create product.
How to do design evaluation and improvement?
- Value analysis: Eliminate costs that do not contribute to value and performance of product.
- Cost to function analysis: evaluate value of each function in marketplace & cost to produce that function and eliminate non cost effective functions.
- Quality Function Deployment (QFD): does the technical design meet the need of the customer?
- Design of Experiments: Taguchi method: to optimise and evaluate characteristics of product.
What is Quality Function Deployment (QFD)?
A method developed in Japan, mid 1970s.
Introduced in US, late 1980s.
Toyota - able to reduce cost of bringing a new car model to market by over 60% & decrease time required for its development by one-third.
Recent study of 150 US companies: 69% were using this.
Companies use this with cross-functional teams of 10 or less.
*figure 6.4
What does Prototypes lead to?
- To complete final design tested and approved to be both functionally and characteristically satisfactory.
- Can get complete parts list as well as production and test instructions.
Why is Prototype tested?
- Reliability: Failure free for a specified period under specified conditions.
- Maintainability: Ease w/ which product can be repaired.
- Fail safe: If one or more parts fail it should not put user in danger (or shut down safely).
- Field test: Performance evaluated under wide range of operating conditions.
- Compatibility: Is it to be combined with other products?
What happens after successful prototyping?
Company decides whether to make or buy = if they are the best company to make product themselves or whether they should approach another company to make it for them.
Can also sell product development/ enter some collaboration.
If production takes place = house pilot runs would lead to full production = launch of product.
Looking at the QFD example overleaf what type of companies has company X
compared itself to? What’s another name for this activity?
The “roof” of the QFD matrix is a “How v’s How” analysis of the specifications.
Why is this a useful exercise for a designer? Give an example of a typical “negative
correlation” between specifications that we have in engineering design.
