Characteristics of Successful Product Development

From the perspective of the investors in a for-profit enterprise, successful product development results in products that can be produced and sold profitably, yet profitability is often difficult to assess quickly and directly. Five more specific dimensions, all of which ultimately relate to profit, are commonly used to assess the performance of a product development effort:

• Product quality: How good is the product resulting from the development effort? Does it satisfy customer needs? Is it robust and reliable? Product quality is ultimately reflected in market share and the price that customers are willing to pay.

• Product cost: What is the manufacturing cost of the product? This cost includes spending on capital equipment and tooling as well as the incremental cost of producing each unit of the product. Product cost determines how much profit accrues to the firm for a particular sales volume and a particular sales price.

• Development time: How quickly did the team complete the product development effort?

Development time determines how responsive the firm can be to competitive forces and to technological developments, as well as how quickly the firm receives the economic returns from the team's efforts.

• Development cost: How much did the firm have to spend to develop the product? Development

cost is usually a significant fraction of the investment required to achieve the profits.

• Development capability: Are the team and the firm better able to develop future products as a result of their experience with a product development project? Development capability is an asset the firm can use to develop products more effectively and economically in the future.

High performance along these five dimensions should ultimately lead to economic success; however, other performance criteria are also important. These criteria arise from interests of other stakeholders in the enterprise, including the members of the development team, other employees, and the community in which the product is manufactured.

Members of the development team may be interested in creating an inherently exciting product. Members of the community in which the product is manufactured may be concerned about the degree to which the product creates jobs. Both production workers and users of the product hold the development team accountable to high safety standards, whether or not these standards can be justified on the strict basis of profitability. Other

individuals, who may have no direct connection to the firm or the product, may demand that the product make ecologically sound use of resources and create minimal dangerous waste products.

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References and Bibliography

Exercises

A wide variety of resources for this chapter and for the rest of the book are available on the Internet. These resources include data, templates, links to suppliers, and lists of publications. Current resources may be accessed via www.ulrich-eppinger.net

Wheelwright and Clark devote much of their book to the very early stages of product development, which we cover in less detail.

Wheelwright, Stephen c., and Kim B. Clark, Revolutionizing Product Development: Quantum Leaps in Speed, Efficiency, and Quality, The Free Press, New York, 1992.

Katzenbach and Smith write about teams in general, but most of their insights apply to product development teams as well.

Katzenbach, Jon R., and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1993.

These three books provide rich narratives of development projects, including fascinating descriptions of the intertwined social and technical processes.

Kidder, Tracy, The Soul of a New Machine, Avon Books, New York, 1981.

Sabbagh, Karl, Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777, Scribner, New York, 1996.

Walton, Mary, Car: A Drama of the American Workplace, Norton, New York, 1997.

Magnesium

The density of magnesium is about 1800 kg/m3 (0.065 lb/in3), which is two-thirds that of aluminum and one-fourth that of steel. Since it is the lightest of all commercial metals, its greatest use is in the aircraft and automotive industries, but other uses are now being found for it. Although the magnesium alloys do not have great strength, because of their light weight the strength-weight ratio compares favorably with the stronger aluminum and steel alloys. Even so, magnesium alloys find their greatest use in applications where strength is not an important consideration. Magnesium will not withstand elevated temperatures; the yield point is definitely reduced when the temperature is raised to that of boiling water. Magnesium and its alloys have a modulus of elasticity of 45 GPa (6.5 Mpsi) in tension and in compression, although some alloys are not as strong in compression as in tension. Curiously enough, cold working reduces the modulus of elasticity. A range of cast magnesium alloys are also available.

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Mechanical Engineering

McGraw−Hill Primis

ISBN: 0−390−76487−6

Text:

Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design,

Eighth Edition

Budynas−Nisbett

Cold-Working Processes

By cold working is meant the forming of the metal while at a low temperature (usually room temperature). In contrast to parts produced by hot working, cold-worked parts have a bright new finish, are more accurate, and require less machining.

Cold-finished bars and shafts are produced by rolling, drawing, turning, grinding, and polishing. Of these methods, by far the largest percentage of products are made by the cold-rolling and cold-drawing processes. Cold rolling is now used mostly for the

production of wide flats and sheets. Practically all cold-finished bars are made by cold drawing but even so are sometimes mistakenly called “cold-rolled bars.” In the drawing process, the hot-rolled bars are first cleaned of scale and then drawn by pulling them through a die that reduces the size about 1 32 to 1 16 in. This process does not remove material from the bar but reduces, or “draws” down, the size. Many different shapes of  hot-rolled bars may be used for cold drawing.

Cold rolling and cold drawing have the same effect upon the mechanical properties. The cold-working process does not change the grain size but merely distorts it. Cold working results in a large increase in yield strength, an increase in ultimate strength and hardness, and a decrease in ductility. In Fig. 2–12 the properties of a colddrawn bar are compared with those of a hot-rolled bar of the same material.

Heading is a cold-working process in which the metal is gathered, or upset. This operation is commonly used to make screw and rivet heads and is capable of producing a wide variety of shapes. Roll threading is the process of rolling threads by squeezing and rolling a blank between two serrated dies. Spinning is the operation of working sheet material around a rotating form into a circular shape. Stamping is the term used to

describe punch-press operations such as blanking, coining, forming, and shallow drawing.

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Mechanical Engineering

McGraw−Hill Primis

ISBN: 0−390−76487−6

Text:

Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design,

Eighth Edition

Budynas−Nisbett

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Shell Molding

The shell-molding process employs a heated metal pattern, usually made of cast iron,

aluminum, or brass, which is placed in a shell-molding machine containing a mixture

of dry sand and thermosetting resin. The hot pattern melts the plastic, which, together with the sand, forms a shell about 5 to 10 mm thick around the pattern. The shell is then baked at from 400 to 700°F for a short time while still on the pattern. It is then stripped from the pattern and placed in storage for use in casting.

In the next step the shells are assembled by clamping, bolting, or pasting; they are placed in a backup material, such as steel shot; and the molten metal is poured into the cavity. The thin shell permits the heat to be conducted away so that solidification takes place rapidly. As solidification takes place, the plastic bond is burned and the mold collapses.

The permeability of the backup material allows the gases to escape and the casting to air-cool. All this aids in obtaining a fine-grain, stress-free casting. Shell-mold castings feature a smooth surface, a draft that is quite small, and close tolerances. In general, the rules governing sand casting also apply to shell-mold casting.

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Mechanical Engineering

McGraw−Hill Primis

ISBN: 0−390−76487−6

Text:

Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design,

Eighth Edition

Budynas−Nisbett

for STEP BY STEP GUIDE autocad simple tutorial please visit.........

www.autocadsimpletutorial.blogspot.com

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