PRODUCT DESIGN

AND
DEVELOPMENT
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Sample Answers to Exercises and

Thought Questions: Chapter 2
EX 2.1

Diagram a process for planning and cooking a family dinner. Does your process
resemble the generic product development process? Is cooking dinner analogous to
a market-pull, technology-push, process-intensive, or customization process?

One process might consist of the following steps:

1. Ask spouse, children, or roommates what they feel like eating and when they
would like to eat.
2. Survey available ingredients.
3. Generate three or so alternatives that are both feasible and meet the desires of
the other diners.
4. Select an alternative through a survey or by a subjective judgment.
5. Plan (usually informally and intuitively) the best sequence for preparing the food.
6. Cook and serve.
7. Reflect on the results and the process (just kidding).
The process of cooking dinner could be analogous to any of the four alternatives. It
could be market-pull. (What do we want for dinner? Let’s go get what we need.) It
could be technology-push. (What ingredients and equipment do we have? What can
we make with the available resources?) It could be process-intensive. (The only
equipment we have in the dorm room is a microwave oven.) It could be a
customization process. (All we know how to make is pasta. Do we want spaghetti,
ziti, or fettucini?)

EX 2.2

Define a process for finding a job. For what types of endeavors does a well defined
process enhance performance?

The process of finding a job might consist of the following steps:

1. Establish criteria for job satisfaction.
2. Articulate constraints (does not require relocation, etc.)
3. Screen job advertisements relative to the criteria and constraints.
4. Generate a list of companies/jobs that satisfy the criteria and constraints.
5. Apply for the advertised jobs and inquire about the generated alternatives.
6. (Hopefully) interview for a set of jobs and receive offers.
7. Evaluate the offers with respect to the criteria.
8. Select the most promising job.
9. Negotiate terms and conditions of employment.
10. Accept job.
(Of course in some economic climates the process may be much simpler: receive a
single offer, then decide whether to accept it or not.)
We would argue that almost any endeavor benefits from some measure of "process
thinking." Defining a process encourages thinking ahead and anticipating
contingencies. In the case of highly unusual and creative tasks, the process may
consist of no more than a list of three general steps to pursue. In the case of
repetitive tasks, the process might consist of hundreds of detailed steps, some of
which may even be automated.

EX 2.3

What type of development process would you expect to find in an established

company successful at developing residential air conditioning units? How about for a
small company that is trying to break into the market for racing wheelchairs?

Air conditioners are fairly standard products embodying relatively stable

technologies. We would expect companies developing air conditioners to have a
customization process with some measure of market-pull. Initially the racing
wheelchair company is likely to have a market-pull process. The firm will be looking
for ways to satisfy the needs of the customers in the market. Eventually, the firm may
adopt more of a customization process in which each customer receives a product
tailored slightly to their own needs, but built around a standard product concept.

EX 2.4

Sketch the organization (in some appropriate graphical representation) of a

consulting firm that develops new products for clients on a project-by-project basis.
Assume that the individuals in the firm represent all of the different functions
required to develop a new product. Would this organization most likely be aligned
with functions, be aligned by projects, or be a hybrid?
One possible diagram of a consulting firm organization:
Consulting firms almost always have a strong project focus and are either project
organizations or heavyweight project matrix organizations. Teams form and dissolve
almost daily in order to meet the needs of new client engagements. In some firms,
there will also exist some measure of functional organization. For example, there
may be a member of the firm responsible for ensuring that the mechanical engineers
have the software tools they need or that the marketing professionals know the latest
research techniques. Nevertheless, the dominant organizational structure is the
project.

TQ 2.1

What role does basic technological research play in the product development
process? How would you modify Exhibit 2-3 to better represent the research and
technology development activities in product development?

This is a large and open-ended question. There is a good discussion of this topic in
Clark and Wheelwright Revolutionizing Product Development. One answer is that
technology development is a parallel activity that provides proven technologies that
can be taken "off the shelf" and used in product development efforts. Clark and
Wheelwright call this the "pizza bin" approach, because technological "ingredients"
are proven and then shelved until they are needed to create a "pizza" (product). The
amendment to Exhibit 2-3 would include a technology development activity with an
arrow to the concept development activity. Some might argue that technology
development may also lead to the identification of new product opportunities. In this
case, the technology development activity would have an arrow to an earlier product
planning or product strategy activity (not shown in Exhibit 2-3).
In some settings the technology development and product development are more
tightly coupled. For example, some start-up companies begin with a basic
technology or invention and then work to quickly commercialize it. In such cases,
much of their early work could be considered technology development. It is fraught
with uncertainty and, in fact, may result in failure. Nevertheless, there are some
technologies with so much commercial promise that these risks are worth taking.

TQ 2.2

Is there an analogy between a university and a product development organization?

Is a university a functional or project organization?

(Based on a solution by Louise Jandura)

We can make the analogy between a product development organization and a
university by considering whether there are university equivalents to both the product
development process and the product development organization.

Although a university has many purposes, its primary purpose is the development of
undergraduate students. The student development process is analogous to the
product development process. The student development process takes as its input a
high school graduate whose mission statement is to get an undergraduate degree.
Its output, instead of a product launch is the graduation of the student. Along the way
there is a well-defined series of steps complete with milestones as in the product
development process. Although the detailed series of steps in the student
development process is different than in the product development process, the
advantages of the well-defined process are similar. In both cases the process
ensures the quality of the output of the process (student), the coordination of the
resources on the development team (faculty, admissions, physical plant), the timely
completion of the project (graduation in 4 years), the management of the project, and
the improvement of the process.

Having established the analogy between the product development process and the
student development process, the next step is to look at the analogy between the
product development organization and the university. The two primary organizational
types are the functional organization where the primary links are among those who
perform similar functions and the project organization where the primary links are
among those who work on the same project. A university is a functional organization.
Some of these functions include:

• faculty, whose primary role is to teach students.

• admissions, who admit students to the process.
• bursar’s office, who monitor student finances.
• physical plant, who maintains the facilities.

There are certainly other functions that make up a university but using just these four
as an example we can see that they are indeed organized by the function they
perform. Although they are all part of the development of the "product", the student,
their strongest ties are to those who share the same function. As in a product
development organization, those sharing the same function are usually located near
each other and report to the same manager.

If we look even further into the organization of the faculty we see that within the
faculty the organization continues to be a functional organization. Breaking it down
further we see:

• faculty, who all teach students.

• schools, who teach students in a particular field, e.g., engineering.
• departments, who teach students in a still more specified field, e.g., mechanical
engineering.

The great strength of a functional organization is that it maintains deep expertise in

the functional areas. The great weakness is that the efficiency of coordination among
the functions is not as good as it could be. This characteristic is seen among
universities as well. A university’s great strength is the vast amount of knowledge
contained in its areas of expertise, not its ability to coordinate among its different
functions.

TQ 2.3

What is the product development organization for students engaged in projects as

part of a product development class?

This is a classic project organization. Although the students may come from different
"functions" (e.g., departments, educational backgrounds), they do not have strong
organizational linkages to these functions. For the purposes of the course, they have
one goal: to get the project done. Especially if they are graded as a team, the
organizational structure closely mirrors that of a "start-up" or other autonomous
project teams. Note that a strong project organization can exist even without
heavyweight project managers. In a course, no manager is explicitly assigned to
each team, yet the team is autonomous and has the ultimate authority and
responsibility to make decisions.

TQ 2.4

Is it possible for some members of a product development organization to be

organized functionally, while others are organized by project? If so, which members
of the team would be the most likely candidates for the functional organization?

Yes, this is possible. In fact it happens all the time. A team may consist of several
members who have strong organizational links to the project and of members with
strong functional links. The team members with strong functional links tend to be
part-time participants. Examples include industrial designers, stress analysts,
technical writers, model makers, and sales people. The design, manufacturing, and
marketing people on the team with on-going responsibilities for project work may be
linked together by strong project ties, while the part-time participants may not share
those links.