Product Design And Development 6th Edition Karl Ulrich, Steven Eppinger - Solutions

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Under what conditions might efforts to accelerate a product development project also lead to increased product quality and/or decreased product manufacturing costs?Under what conditions might these attributes of the product deteriorate when the project is accelerated?
What would you expect to be some of the characteristics of individuals who successfully lead project teams?
This chapter has focused on the “hard” issues in project management related to tasks, dependencies, and schedules. What are some of the “soft,” or behavioral, issues related to project management?
When a task on the critical path (e.g., the fabrication of a mold) is delayed, the completion of the entire project is delayed, even though the total amount of work required to complete the project may remain the same. How would you expect such a delay to impact the total cost of the project?
Interview a project manager (not necessarily from product development). Ask him or her to describe the major obstacles to project success.
What strategies could you employ to prepare dinner more quickly? If you thought about dinner 24 hours in advance, are there any steps you could take to reduce the time between arriving home the next day and serving dinner?
Prepare a PERT chart for the tasks in Exercise 1. How fast can one person prepare this dinner? What if there were two people?
The tasks for preparing a dinner (along with the normal completion times) might include:a. Wash and cut vegetables for the salad (15 minutes).b. Toss the salad (2 minutes).c. Set the table (8 minutes).d. Start the rice cooking (2 minutes).e. Cook rice (25 minutes).f. Place the rice in a serving
What are various ways that you could consider in a quantitative analysis the effect of cannibalization of an existing product offered by the same firm?
How would you use the quantitative analysis method to capture the economic performance of an entire line of products to be developed and introduced over several years?
One model of the impact of a delay in product introduction is that sales are simply shifted later in time. Another model is that some of the sales are pushed beyond the“window of opportunity” and are lost forever. Can you suggest other models for the implications of an extension of product
Can you think of successful products that never would have been developed if their creators had relied exclusively on a quantitative financial model to justify their efforts?Do these products share any characteristics?
Consider the economic impact to the AB-100 project if the coffee capsules are recyclable.Assume that 50% of the capsules are returned, with a scrap material value of $0.001/unit, variable cost to recycle capsules of $0.01/unit, and $500,000 per year fixed costs to operate the recycling program.
Revise the tornado chart in Exhibit 18-15 to show the effect of an increase in development time. Assume that the minimum change in development time is zero, and the maximum change in development time is an increase of one quarter.
Compute the trade-off rules for the case described in Exercise 2.
Build a quantitative model to analyze the development and sale of a bicycle light.Assume that you could sell 20,000 units per year for five years at a sales price(wholesale) of $20 per unit and a manufacturing cost of $10 per unit. Assume that production ramp-up expenses would be $20,000, ongoing
List five reasons firms may choose to pursue a product even if the quantitative analysis reveals a negative NPV.
For a product-service system such as a mobile phone or an automobile, consider the relative pricing of the product and the service. How would you optimize pricing to maximize profi ts? What are some of the challenges that make this very diffi cult to do in practice?
Draw the Zipcar process fl ow diagram in a way that explicitly delineates process fl ows for customer actions, visible employee actions, back-offi ce employee activities, and IT-based systems. What is the relationship between the company’s service process fl ow and the customer’s service
What are the differences and similarities between the product development process and the process of designing services? Illustrate your answer with representative development process diagrams.
List five products that benefitted from the introduction of necessary or complementary services in terms of market success and customer satisfaction.
Identify opportunities for innovation or areas of recent innovation in the service process described in Exercise 1.
Define the service process flow for a service of interest to you. Some suggestions are purchasing a new automobile, going to a coffee shop, booking a vacation, buying a new computer, purchasing music, dining in a restaurant, going to the movies, staying at a hotel, applying to graduate school, or
Why might an inventor describe but not claim an invention in a patent?
Controversy erupted in 1999 when the J.M. Smucker Company sued a Michigan bakery, Albie’s, for infringing on its patent by marketing a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich crimped on the edges. (See U.S. patent 6,004,596.) Albie’s argued that the patent was issued in error because the
Generate one or more product concepts that are very different from the Coffin and Sorensen inventions to address the problem of handling a hot coffee cup and that don’t infringe the Coffin and Sorensen patents.
Draw a logic diagram of two claims for the patent in Exercise 1.
Draft a claim for the self-stick notepad invention marketed by 3M Corporation as the Post-it note.
Find a patent number on a product that interests you. Look up the patent using an online reference tool.
Explain the importance of balance in an experimental plan.
When would you choose not to randomize the order of the experiments? How would you guard against bias?
If you are able to afford a larger experiment (with more runs), how might you best utilize the additional runs?
Formulate an appropriate signal-to-noise ratio for the seat belt experiment. Analyze the experimental data using this metric. Is signal-to-noise ratio a useful objective function in this case? Why or why not?
Explain why the 1/4-fractional-factorial and orthogonal array plans shown in Exhibit 15-4 are balanced.
Design an experiment to determine a robust process for making coffee.
Microsoft uses frequent comprehensive prototypes in its development of software. In fact, in some projects there is a “daily build,” in which a new version of the product is integrated and compiled every day. Is this approach only viable for software products, or could it be used for physical
Is a drawing a physical or an analytical prototype?
Some companies have reportedly abandoned the practice of doing a customer test with the early prototypes of their products, preferring instead to go directly and quickly to market in order to observe the actual customer response. For what types of products and markets might this practice make sense?
Today there are several 3D printing technologies able to create physical parts directly from 3D CAD files (e.g., stereolithography and selective laser sintering). How might a team use such rapid prototyping technologies during the concept development phase of the product development process? Might
Many product development teams separate the “looks-like” prototype from the“works-like” prototype. They do this because integrating both function and form is difficult in the early phases of development. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach? For what types of products
Position the prototypes shown in Exhibits 14-3, 14-4, 14-6, 14-7, and 14-13 on the plot in Exhibit 14-5. Briefly explain your reasoning for each placement.
Devise a prototyping plan (similar to that in Exhibit 14-14) for investigating the comfort of different types of handles for kitchen knives.
Position the chair prototype described in Exercise 1 on the plot in Exhibit 14-5.For which of the four major purposes would a product development team use such a prototype?
A furniture manufacturer is considering a line of seating products to be fabricated by cutting and bending a recycled plastic material available in large sheets. Create a prototype of at least one possible chair design by cutting and bending a sheet of paper or cardboard. (You may wish to design
Can you propose a set of metrics that would be useful for the team to predict changes in the actual costs of supporting production? To be effective, these metrics must be sensitive to changes in the design that affect indirect costs experienced by the firm.What are some of the barriers to the
Is it possible to determine what a product really costs once it is put into production? If so, how might you do this?
Is it practical to design a product with 100 percent assembly efficiency (DFA index 5 1.0)? What conditions would have to be met? Can you think of any products with very high (greater than 75 percent) assembly efficiency?
Consider the following 10 “design rules” for electromechanical products. Do these seem like reasonable guidelines? Under what circumstances could one rule conflict with another one? How should such a trade-off be settled?a. Minimize parts count.b. Use modular assembly.c. Stack assemblies.d.
List 10 reasons why reducing the number of parts in a product might reduce production costs. Also list some reasons why costs might increase.
Suggest some potential cost-reducing modifications you could make to improve the product costed earlier. Compute the DFA index before and after these changes.
Estimate the production cost for a simple product you may have purchased. Try costing a product with fewer than 10 components, such as a kitchen accessory, a pen, a jackknife, or a baby’s toy. Remember that one reasonable upper bound for your estimate, including overhead, is the wholesale price
Consider the DFE assessment tool used by Herman Miller (Exhibit 12-12), which computed the weighted sum of scores for material chemistry, use of recycled content, ease of disassembly, and recyclability. What modifications would you propose to create a DFE assessment tool for a different type of
Explain the relationship between DFE and DFM. Consider, for example, those DFE guidelines related to production in Exhibit 12-8.
How would you explicitly include renewable and nonrenewable energy in the life cycle diagram in Exhibit 12-3? Draw such a diagram and explain it.
For each life cycle stage, identify a product or service that has high environmental impacts during the particular life cycle stage. Then, suggest a new or existing product or service that provides the same functionality with lower (or without any) environmental impacts.
In what ways can DFE help to improve the quality of a product, in terms of its functionality, reliability, durability, and reparability?
For the Setu chair, what types of environmental impacts would be in the use stage of its life cycle?
What are some of the ways in which you have become more aware of your own environmental impact in recent years?
For the product considered in Exercise 1, compute its environmental impact score using any LCA analysis tool available to you.
Disassemble a simple product, such as a ballpoint pen. Suggest two ways to reduce its environmental impacts.
List at least 10 types of environmental impacts over the life cycle of your personal computer or mobile phone. Chart these as in Exhibit 12-6, representing your judgment of the relative impact of each life cycle stage.
Visit a local specialty store (e.g., kitchen supplies, tools, office supply, gifts) and photograph(or purchase) a set of competing products. Assess each one in terms of the five ID quality categories as shown in Exhibit 11-11. Which product would you purchase?Would you be willing to pay more for it
The schematic shown in Exhibit 10-6 includes 15 elements. Consider the possibility of assigning each element to its own chunk. What are the strengths and weaknesses of such an architecture?
There are thousands of architectural decisions to be made in the development of an automobile. Consider all of the likely fundamental and incidental interactions that any one functional element (say, safety restraints) would have with the others. How would you use the documentation of such
The argument for the motorcycle architecture shown in Exhibit 10-5 is that it allows for a lighter motorcycle than the more modular alternative. What are the other advantages and disadvantages? Which approach is likely to cost less to manufacture?
Can a firm achieve high product variety without a modular product architecture? How(or why not)?
Do service products, such as bank accounts or insurance policies, have architectures?
Take apart a small electromechanical product (which you are willing to sacrifice if necessary). Draw a schematic including the essential functional elements. Identify two or three possible clusterings of these elements into chunks. Is there any evidence to suggest which architecture was chosen by
Describe the architecture of a Swiss army knife. What advantages and disadvantages does this architecture provide?
Draw a schematic for a wristwatch, using only functional elements (without assuming any particular physical working principles or components).
When might it not be advantageous to communicate the product concept to potential customers using a working prototype? Under what circumstances is it better to use some other format?
Why do you think respondents typically overestimate the likelihood that they will purchase a product?
Roughly estimate N for the following products. List your assumptions.a. A sleeping pillow for air travelers.b. An electronic weather station (monitoring temperature, pressure, humidity, etc.)for homes.
What are some different ways you could communicate a concept for a new user interface for an automotive audio system? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach?
What could cause a situation in which a development team uses the concept selection method to agree on a concept that then results in commercial failure?
Can you imagine an interactive computer tool that would allow a large group (say, 20 or more people) to participate in the concept selection process? How might such a tool work?
How might you use the method to determine which product features should be standard and which should be optional or add-ons?
How might you use the concept selection method to decide whether to offer a single product to the marketplace or to offer several different product options?
Repeat Exercise 3, but use concept scoring. Zip Pouch Screw Cap Clam Shell Slider
Perform concept screening for the four pencil holder concepts shown below. Assume the pencil holders are for a member of a product development team who is continually moving from site to site.
Propose a set of selection criteria for the choice of a battery technology for use in a portable computer.
How can the concept selection methods be used to benchmark or evaluate existing products?Perform such an evaluation for five automobiles you might consider purchasing.
Consider the task of generating new concepts for the problem of dealing with leaves on a lawn. How would a plastic-bag manufacturer’s assumptions and problem decomposition differ from those of a manufacturer of lawn tools and equipment and from those of a company responsible for maintaining golf
Could you apply the five-step method to an everyday problem like choosing the food for a picnic?
For what types of products would the initial focus of the concept generation activity be on the form and user interface of the product and not on the core technology? Describe specific examples.
What would be the relative advantages and disadvantages of involving actual customers in the concept generation process?
What are the prospects for computer support for concept generation activities? Can you think of any computer tools that would be especially helpful in this process?
Prepare an external-search plan for the problem of permanently applying serial numbers to plastic products.
Generate 20 concepts for the subproblem “prevent fraying of end of rope” as part of a system for cutting lengths of nylon rope from a spool.
Decompose the problem of designing a new barbecue grill. Try a functional decomposition as well as a decomposition based on the user interactions with the product.
Why should independent design variables not be used as metrics?
Can poor performance relative to one specification always be compensated for by high performance on other specifications? If so, how can there ever really be a “marginally acceptable” value for a metric?
How might you explain a situation in which customers’ perceptions of the competitive products (as in Exhibit 6-7) are not consistent with the values of the metrics for those same products (as in Exhibit 6-6)?
Why are some customer needs difficult to map to a single metric?
How might you establish precise and measurable specifications for intangible needs such as “the front suspension looks great”?
Some of the same metrics seem to be involved in trade-offs for many different products.What are some examples of such metrics?
Devise a metric and a corresponding test for the need that a roofing material last many years.
List a set of metrics corresponding to the need that a pen write smoothly.
Can the process of identifying customer needs lead to the creation of innovative product concepts? In what ways? Could a structured process of identifying customer needs lead to a fundamentally new product concept like the Post-it Note?
One of the reasons the method is effective is that it involves the entire development team. Unfortunately, the method can become unwieldy with a team of more than 10 people. How might you modify the method to maximize involvement yet maintain a focused and decisive effort given a large development

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Product Design And Development 6th Edition Karl Ulrich, Steven Eppinger - Solutions

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