Organization & Product Design

In the first week of June 2010, TATA MOTORS had inaugurated first plant for their new product, NANO. After lot of debate and land problem, TATA MOTORS had shifted their plant from West Bengal to Gujrat. Ultimately in mid-2010, their dream for launching people’s car, NANO came into reality. NANO was officially launched few months back; but with the factory at Gujrat, NANO had got official incubator.

Most of the companies dream for launching new product. Product design is a challenge for all the organizations.

What is product design?
Product design is conceptualization of an idea about a product and transformation of the idea into a reality.
To transform the idea into reality a specification about the product is prepared. This specification is prepared by considering different constraints such as production process, customer expectation, etc. In product design stage every aspect of the product is analyzed. Also final decision regarding the product is taken on the basis of the analysis. This decision can be any aspect related to the product, e.g. dimension and tolerances, type of material for every components, etc.

Why organizations design new product?
Objectives of product design:
# To ensure growth of the organization
# To utilize the surplus capacity of the organization, such as physical facility, man power, etc.
# To utilize the surplus fund of the organization
# To meet new requirement of the customers
# To increase company’s market share and to target new market segment
# To ensure complete product range in company’s portfolio

Product design is one of the most important and sensitive factor for an organization. Success or failure of the product decides company’s business, market share and reputation. So during design stage various factors related to the product needs to be addressed.





What are the characteristics of a good product design?
Features of a good product design:
Functionality: The product must function properly for intended purpose.
Reliability: The product must perform properly for the designated period of time.
Productivity: The product must be produced with a required quantity and quality at a defined and feasible cost.
Quality: The product must satisfy customer’s stated and unstated needs.
Standardization: The product should be designed in such a fashion so that most of the components are standardized and easily available in the market.
Maintainability: The product must perform for a designated period with a minimum and defined maintenance. Adequate provision for maintenance should be kept in the product.
Cost effectiveness: The product must be cost effective. The must be manufactured in the most cost effective environment.

What are the various concepts used in product design?
Concepts of product design:
# Research & development:Basic research is a search for new knowledge. It does not have any immediate application, but based on the basic research new product can be developed in future.
Applied research has objective of developing commercial products.
# Reverse engineering:
Reverse engineering is the process of carefully dismantling a product, understanding its design and developing a product which is better than the existing one.
# CAD-CAM:
By using 3D modeling software system, designers develop a computerized model of a new product and analyze its design parameters. After computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM) system produce the product by using CNC facility.
# Concurrent engineering (CE):
CE is different than conventional approach of design. In CE, different co-related teams are formed, which perform different activities for developing a product. For example, development of market concept, design of product, development of manufacturing process, selection and arrangement of material for new design is performed by different teams at the same time. It reduces considerable amount of time to develop a new product.

In practice different concepts are combined and applied together to design a new product.
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You can read: http://www.slideshare.net/nirjhar_jgec/product-design-concept