Impact of Product Design - Product Design Process Versus Production Process

Impact of Product Design

Impact of Product Design

        The concept of product design in a complex process by which a product or service idea transforms into specific production plans. Much emphasis is placed on the design process to ensure a successful outcome for a product or service launch. However, the process does not stop with design, process planning strategies must be implemented to provide the proper production steps that are precise and cost effective.

Product Design Process versus Production Process

Product design processes have a tremendous impact on the final product or service. The design process is where decisions are made about what the product or service will look like, how it will function, materials used in production, and set tolerances (Russell & Taylor III, 2014). If the design results in a poor quality product or service, the customer’s expectations or needs will most likely not be met. And the same goes for over designing that makes the end product or service too costly to meet customer’s needs. Also, the time it takes to produce a product design and end product has huge implications too. Taking too little time results in defects and flaws but taking too much time allows competitors to be first to market the new product or service. The design process involves walking a fine line between what is or is not successful in the marketplace.

        An efficient design process involves meeting customer needs, ensuring customer needs are met, reduced time to implement a new product, and reduce revisions to make a workable design (Russell & Taylor III, 2014). The steps involved in this process are idea generation, feasibility study, rapid prototyping, final testing and product launch (Russell & Taylor III, 2014). Each step builds on the other by fine tuning the design to make a better quality product or service with minimum operating costs.

One may believe that once the product design process clears the feasibility study phase all that is left to do is produce, package, and sell the product. This is not true because, many times changes are necessary to ensure the quality, reduce the time to manufacture the product or turn a product design into one that manufacturing can use utilizing their skills and machinery (Russell & Taylor III, 2014). A couple of these changes are design simplification and design for manufacture.        

Design simplification is just reducing the number of parts and options that go into making the product (Russell & Taylor III, 2014). By reducing the number of parts, tools, and fasteners, the time needed to assemble the product is reduced and therefore, production costs are lowered. However, design for manufacture (DFM) combines the fundamental concepts of simplification with some additional requirements. Not only does DFM reduce the number of parts and fasteners, but it also incorporates using standardized parts with multiple uses, simplifies product assembly, and allows for testing and replacement of parts (Russell & Taylor III, 2014).