Barriers to accomplishing effective Design Reviews include the following: — The DR team consists of people who are unevenly matched in skills and knowledge. — Product developers tend to press on with little communication among related departments. — The product development schedule is often cramped and allows for little time and flexibility for changes in response to DR. — The DR team may lack the expertise, resources or authority to to make the process effective. — During the concept phase of the design process, the DR team has little basis on which to provide feedback. — Product Design managers view DR to be separate from design, thereby leaving little scope for conducting DR of drawings, specifications etc. — DR is an additional demand on both the design and engineering teams, both of which are under constraints.
Authors experience in industrial engineering, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Industrial Engineering.
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Conduct market research, business analysis, prototype development and trials to reduce uncertainty, acquire information and ultimately increase new product development success.
Literature Review.
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Create and maintain high levels of integration between Marketing and Research & Development functions and product prototype development, product launch and cycle times will all have increased proficiency. Market forecast accuracy and technological core competency fit will also be improved with function integration. Be sure to implement integration at step 4.1.
Survey. A multiple regression analysis revealed significance between integration and: product prototype development proficiency (F=70.80); product launch proficiency (F=122.74); product development cycle time (F=13.84), market forecast accuracy (F=75.65); and technological core competency fit (F=39.64), all interactions significant at the p<.001 level.
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Design Review does not create good ideas, but instead ensures that good ideas work as well as possible. Design Review involves six actions: 1) Collect and compile information; 2) Define quality targets; 3) Evaluate product and process designs and supporting operations; 4) Proposition of improvements; 5) Definition of subsequent actions; 6) Confirmation of readiness to move to next stage.
Authors experience in industrial engineering, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Industrial Engineering.
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Design for Quality/Design Review — the systematic process of bringing complex products to the market quickly, while ensuring product design quality meets customer requirements, within cost and time constraints. Design Review is is generally applied at the general design stage, and to a lesser degree, at the detailed design and pilot building stages. Design Review is based on two premises: 1) Make the best of available knowledge and technology from both in-house and outside resources; 2) Do everything to resolve problems as they arise. Avoid passing them downstream.
Authors experience in industrial engineering, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Industrial Engineering.
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Distribution of collaboration during Technical Development stage was manufacturer involvement (94%), user involvement (9%) and third-party involvement (29%).
Case study of seventeen medical equipment innovations marketed by 13 Dutch firms.
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Failure Knowledge Network (FKN) — captures and inter-relates mechanical product quality knowledge from five areas: (i) the connection between failures and product functions, (ii) the relationship between failures and product components, (iii) the correlation between failures and organizations, (iv) the association between failures and product processes, and (v) the conjunction among different failures. FKN information is represented in a four-dimensional matrix that includes components, functions, processes and organization. Each element in the matrix is a failure scenario and represents the related failures within the corresponding dimensions. Conventional factors of failures are embodied in the FKN representation. They include event, detection, effect, severity, solution weight, cause, monitor, reappearance, operation, efficiency and precaution. The indexes of each factor are provided by subject matter experts and are set in accordance with the correlation between corresponding characteristics and failures.
Failure knowledge based decision-making in product quality.
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Structure of the product design process — design is the process by which an idea is converted into information from which a product can be made. Several design paradigms aid in the process: 1. Need for a model — scale models, functional designs and prototypes permit revisions. 2. Need for redundancy — back-up to ensure functionality and to add a degree of safety. 3. Scale effect — ensure that all components are designed and built to the same scale to avoid interference or loss of degrees of freedom. 4. Keep the initial and entire design in mind — changes to any component may affect the whole or may distort the intended functionality. 5. Avoid confirming a false hypothesis — assumptions about how a system works can lead to failed designs. 6. Avoid tunnel vision — all factors involved in the design process need to be given due consideration.
Author experience and as applied to a case study.
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Techniques for gathering voice of the customer information include: use of customer complaints, internal market research, focus groups, one-to-one interviews, phone interviews, contextual inquiry, customer behavior studies, and perceptual mapping.
Literature review and case studies.
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Technical Resources, Skills & Activity: A company's technical resources (including production resources, skills of engineering staff, experience in R&D) are important factors in successful products.
Source: In: Calantone, R.J., diBenedetto, C.A. (1988)

Use computer based tools to help shorten design time, reduce costs and improve quality.
Source: Karagozoglu and Brown (1993). In: Koufteros, X. & Marcoulides, G. A. (2006)