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1. UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER NEEDS AND MANAGE REQUIREMENTS. Better customer
relationships, frequent communication, and feedback systems lead to better
understanding the customer's/user's needs. Customer involvement increases
the probability of the product meeting those needs and being successful
in the market. Methodologies such as Quality Function Deployment aid in
defining customer needs and translating those needs into specific product,
process and quality requirements. Once customer requirements are defined,
track and tightly manage those requirements and minimize creeping elegance
that will stretch out development.
2. PLAN AND MANAGE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT. Integrate product development
and R&D with the business strategy and business plans. Determine the
impact of time-to-market on product development and consider time and quality
as a source of competitive advantage. Develop a longer-term perspective
on investments in R&D and process technology and factor into business
strategies. Communicate these plans to development and R&D personnel.
Undertake fewer development projects at any point in time to allow a greater
focus of resources and shorten development time.
3. USE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAMS. Early involvement of marketing/
program management, manufacturing, material, test, quality, and product
support personnel in product development provides a multi-functional perspective
and facilitate the parallel design of product and process, reducing design
iterations and production problems. Collocation improves communication and
coordination among team members. Empowered, self-directed teams have greater
ownership and are more committed to development objectives, improving the
chance of a successful design on schedule and budget.
4. INTEGRATE PROCESS DESIGN. The design of manufacturing and product
support processes must be integrated with the design of products in order
to optimize the performance, availability and life cycle cost of the product.
Understand existing and planned process capabilities and constraints. Develop
and apply producibility and supportability guidelines and utilize formal
tools such as design for manufacturability/assembly and maintainability
analysis tools to improve product designs. Integrate design and business
rule checking into automated design processes.
5. MANAGE COSTS FROM THE START. Develop a greater awareness of affordability
and life cycle costs. Involve development team members in the plans and
proposals for new products or programs to obtain their input and commitment.
Establish target costs and manage to those targets. Use tools to project
product and life cycle costs and consider these cost projections as part
of decision-making to proactively manage costs. Manage non-recurring development
costs by effective planning; incremental, low-risk development; and managing
project scope.
6. INVOLVE SUPPLIERS AND SUBCONTRACTORS EARLY. Suppliers know their
product technology, product application, and process constraints best. Utilize
this expertise during product development and optimize product designs to
the capabilities of the "virtual factory" which includes these
suppliers. Reduce your supplier base to focus more attention on a long term
relationship and incentivize early involvement. Maintain schedule stability
and be open to improvement suggestions from suppliers to create better products
at lower costs.
7. DEVELOP ROBUST DESIGNS. Quality engineering and reliability techniques
such as Design of Experiments, FMECA, etc., provide an efficient way to
understand the role and interaction of product and process parameters with
a performance or quality characteristic leading to robust designs and enhanced
reliability. Apply "lessons learned" to avoid repeating past mistakes
and conduct formal design reviews to assure all design issues and risks
have been appropriately addressed.
8. INTEGRATE CAE, CAD, CAM & CASE TOOLS. Integrated CAE/CAD tools
working with a common digital product model facilitate capture, analysis,
and refinement of product and process design data in a more timely manner.
Integration of CAM tools facilitate process design/definition with fewer
errors, greater accuracy, and a reduction in leadtime to production. CASE
tools to support a standard development methodology and software re-useability
with object-oriented design bring a similar level of productivity to software.
A single repository of product data minimizes data handling, redundancy
and errors as product data is used by various functions. Features-based
solids modeling, electronic design frameworks and ultimately standards such
as STEP and EDIF facilitate the downstream interpretation, analysis and
use of this product data. These tools, when intelligently and cost effectively
applied, can lead to a streamlined development process and project organization.
9. SIMULATE PRODUCT PERFORMANCE AND MANUFACTURING PROCESSES ELECTRONICALLY.
Solids modeling with variation analysis and interference checking allows
for electronic mock-ups. Analysis and simulation tools such as FEA, circuit
simulation, thermal analysis, NC verification and software simulation can
be used to develop and refine both product and process design inexpensively.
These tools should be used early in the development process to develop a
more mature design and to reduce the number of time-consuming design/build/test
iterations for mock-ups and developmental prototypes.
10. CREATE AN EFFICIENT DEVELOPMENT APPROACH. Form compact product
development teams with highly experienced and motivated members. Minimize
the number of development teams and the coordination required with skillful
architecture and a minimum of interfaces. Create a "skunk works"
environment by minimizing bureaucracy, empowering product development teams,
and providing technical productivity tools. Align policies, performance
appraisal, and reward systems to support these development objectives and
team-based approaches.
11. IMPROVE THE DESIGN PROCESS CONTINUOUSLY. Re-engineer the design process and eliminate
non-value-added activities. Constantly question why things are done and
how they could be done better. Make quality the basis for decisions.
Continued integration of technical tools, design activities and formal
methodologies will improve the design process. Use benchmarking as an
objective basis for comparing the organization and its products to other
companies and their products and identifying opportunities for
improvement. Invest in training and develop personnel to improve
productivity.
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