NEW MODEL FOR INTEGRATED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Lars Skjelstad

Department of Production and quality Engineering, NTNUTrondheim, Norway

AbstractThe Norwegian Research Council has sponsored a project that aimed to increase the impact ofmanufacturing concerns in design projects. This should be done without compromising thecustomers’ requirements to the product. Partners were HÅG, a manufacturer of office chairs andSINTEF Industrial Management. HÅG spent four years developing a new chair, and in the sameperiod SINTEF assisted the development of a totally new way of producing the chairs. Theexperiences from the project are used to develop a new model for considering the co-ordinateddevelopment of products and processes.In the proposed model the manufacturing system and the distribution process are considered to beproducts as well. Hence, in this particular case we have a sitting product (chair), a manufacturingproduct and a sales/distribution product. On an aggregated level, they must go through the samestages in their development process, and demands from different design foci (design for X)concerning i.e. the environment or their life after realisation must be included in all three processes.The challenge is therefore to co-ordinate and exchange information between three paralleldevelopment paths instead of trying to include all aspects into one. The participants in the product-as well as the manufacturing- and distribution- development processes are highly motivated, andideas at the concept stage may come from either party. Experiences from the project andpreliminary results with regards to the integration of the product and manufacturing developmentare discussed in this paper.

Keywords: Concurrent Engineering, Integrated Product Development, Case study

1 INTRODUCTIONThe core business processes of a manufacturingenterprise are “product to market”, and “product tocustomer”. These include product design,manufacturing and sales/distribution. All otherprocesses might be considered as support activitiesto these core processes. To be able to compete intoday’s dynamic market, all processes, andespecially the core processes, have to becontinuously improved and developed. Withoutattractive products, which can be produced at anacceptable price level and delivered according tocustomer demands, the business is likely to be introuble in the long run. In addition to the marketdemands, the enterprise put up internal demands tothe core processes. They must all be highlyeffective to maximise the profit of the company.

When the core processes are integrated in adevelopment project, the possibility to obtainbenefits for the customers as well as the enterpriseincreases. This is however not always easy to do,due to differences in culture, organisation,competence, tools, methods etc. among theparticipating departments. In addition, the existingmodels for integrating these core processes areusually based on a product development projectonto which the other subjects (manufacturing andsales/distribution) are added. This may in somecases obstruct the best solutions. For instance, the

fact that new ideas might occur in either of the coreprocesses is not taken sufficiently intoconsideration.

An experience learned at HÅG, shows that after theintroduction of new products in the market, a periodwith improvement and adjustment of themanufacturing system developed always follows.Another experience is that the product itself mustbe adjusted to be more elegant to manufacture.This becomes more visible when the sales volumeof the new product increases and the material flowconnected to this particular product getsconsiderable. In addition, the new product is likelyto come in more variants over time, as the productfamily grows. All these aspects lead to theconclusion that the basis for this should be laid atthe design stage.

Customer focus has been the leading trend forindustry making goods to end customers over thepast years, and the companies are facing evermore stringent demands with respect to time, pricesand product variants. However, it is now time tolook into the company’s core processes also, inorder to secure the highest possible revenue, thekey to future development projects.Carl Peter Aaser, developing director of HÅG,states: “When companies in the furniture industrydevelops new products, one of the goals is of

course to make them easy to manufacture. But,when the production volume reaches a level thatcould justify automated operations, one oftenexperiences that the manufacturing has not beensufficiently taken care of after all during thedevelopment. In this project we wanted theexpectations from the manufacturing department tobe promoted just as strongly as the expectations tothe products functions and aesthetics”.

Common for most manufacturing companies is thatal lot of their future revenues are depending ontoday’s development projects. Of course theproduct must be a success in the market, but inaddition, the company may influence both expensesand revenues by motivating for;• shorter development time• easier manufacturing implementation and

product launch• cheaper production

The goal of this project is not to develop a newoverall product development method, but tointroduce manufacturing concerns stronger into theexisting ones.

2. EXPERIENCES FROM HÅGHÅG designs, manufactures, markets and sellsoffice-chairs on the European and North Americanmarket. The company has its manufacturing plantat Røros while design, marketing and salesdepartments are situated in Oslo, some 400 kmaway.The company introduced JIT techniques in theirproduction management system six years ago.Results from this effort have been discussed asrather successful in Norway, and the company hasprofited on both the changes and the extra publicity.To become a true JIT enterprise, one also has todesign the production processes as well as theproducts themselves to suite the philosophy of JITcompletely. These are long-term activities that mustbe handled over some years. Hence it is naturallyto follow up the first implementation with a projectincluding the topics of new design.HÅG compares the change from relatively smallvolume production to large series production of aproduct with moving from craftsmanlike worktowards industrial production. It is when the plantmust handle a large number of orders, withconsiderable variety, the manufacturing taskbecomes a challenge.

This case-project investigated the productdevelopment method in use at HÅG, and foundimprovement possibilities. Changes might involvetopics like organisation, competence, proceduresetc., but in this project focus was held onmanufacturing aspects. In the following, threepotential areas concerning the method will bediscussed;

• Use of existing tools• Importance of the early phases of the

development process• What and when to integrate

2.1 Use of existing tools and methodsMany tools and methods are available forassistance in product development projects, butstudies show little use of them in industry. Thereare several reasons for this, the most importantones being;

• some techniques are not very well known to theengineers

• some methods and tools are just to demanding• the output is often dependent of the relative

uncertain input, and hence not reliable anyway

The case project revealed several other potentialimprovement areas within the organisation and theworking method used in this specific company:

• It seems hard to get full commitment from alldepartments (especially in the beginning) sincethe development project is owned by theproduct development department

• Ideas that arise in the distribution- ormanufacturing departments sets off internalprojects, not integrated ones

• The different departments have, to someextent, different language and focus, and thishinders good co-operation

• The participants take their own knowledge forgiven, and do not realise that they are hidingrelevant information. Others might not knowenough about that topic to ask the rightquestions

• Since time to market is essential, the work onhow to manufacture and distribute the newproduct must start in the early phases of theproduct development project and not be addedto the end as an extension. This has been achallenge for the case company in previousprojects

To be able to offer attractive products, one of theleading trends for the past decades have been“Design for X” (abr. DfX). This has resulted in a bigcollection of different design foci (X’s). In DfX the Xhas two meanings; either X stands for a life phaseor phase system for the product such as assembly,manufacturing, recycling, service, etc. or X standsfor an universal virtue such as cost, environment,time, quality, risk, flexibility etc [1]. These areas arerepresented by their own set of rules that aresupposed to be used during the main designprocess. There are two comments that can bemade based on the experiences from the case-project. First, many of the DfX’s consist of rules ofthumbs to guide the designer. If they are too

general or simple, designers and engineers findthem hard to utilise unless he or she is wellexperienced in that particular X-field. It looks likethe simple rules are too simple. The other point isrelated to the definition made in this project,considering the three physical systems (primeproduct, manufacturing system and distributionsystem) as products. All three products (sitting,manufacturing and distribution) need to beoptimised by these rules, not only the primeproduct.

In spite of some shortcomings, increased use ofexisting tools and methods should be encouragedbecause they often represent more structure andthus a common way of working in the project inaddition to serving good results. Next generationcomputer based tools should be more integratedthough, for instance by using the same datasources as input.

2.2 Importance of the early phases of thedevelopment process

Often, some departments’ impact on the finaldesign is reduced because their expertise isintroduced too late in the overall process. Too laterefers to that the project will be either moreexpensive, delayed, or both if more concerns are tobe introduced at this stage or later. Several studieshave shown that approximately 70% of the costs ofa product are determined during the early phases ofthe design project [2]. According to Andreassenand Hein [3], this seems to be the case for otheruniversal properties as well. Hence, it is crucial tobe able to exploit this period in an optimal way.

At HÅG, the same situation was discovered, andone of their clear potentials is to get all departmentsto start their work in the early phases of thedevelopment project. Both the current and thewanted situation for the case company aredescribed in figure 1. At the top of the figure,general phases of a development process areshown. Underneath, the engagement of themarket-, technical construction- and manufacturing-departments are shown as full lines. These do notstart at the same time, and at least themanufacturing department is engaged too late. Thewanted situation is shown as broken lines, and thecrossing arrows indicate that information andconsequences of decisions must be exchanged alltime.

Idea Market Specifi-cation Concept Manu-

fac.

Market

Tech.constr.

Manufac.

Detail-design

Requirements and wishes must beexchanged at an early stage

Figure 1: Current and wanted situation in HÅG’sdevelopment projects

The result of too late introduction of manufacturingconcerns into the development process is oftenfocus on downstream activities only, like trimmingof components. Such activities can be introducedrelatively late in the ongoing project.

The company tries to involve all departments early,as they are well aware of the benefits obtainable ifachieving this. It seems, however, that it is noteasy for the manufacturing department toparticipate without a clear definition of what to do.This is discussed in section 2.3.By introducing more aspect in the beginning of thedevelopment project, it is likely that the processgets even more complicated. The challenge is tofind a simple but still useful overall method forintegrated product and process developmentprojects.

2.3 What and when to integrateIntegration in development projects has been aresearch topic for many years. The goals are alsowell known; shorten time to market, add morequalities into the product, and develop theproduction facilities in parallel to ensure a goodmatch between the product, production and marketdemands. But often integration is synonymous withparallelism. Doing things in parallel however doesnot necessarily mean they are sufficientlyintegrated.HÅG has internal competence on most of theirkernel business areas, but uses to large extentexternal resources in project work. Exampleshereof are external designers, engineers,consultants on production planning and control,marketing, ICT etc. This increases the challengesrelated to integration between different disciplines indeveloping projects.

Traditionally the marketing department has mostinfluence in development projects. A product withno customers is meaningless to develop. Thechallenge is therefore to pay consideration tomanufacturing arguments at the same time as themarket is satisfied. For instance, not allmanufacturing concerns are related directly to theshape or material of components. Studies inindustry shows that only 10-15% of the lead-timethrough the manufacturing plant is actually value-adding activities. The overall production philosophyis important with regards to the rest of the lead-time. Two companies with similar equipment andproducts can be exploited differently due to differentconfiguration, planning and control philosophies,size of buffers etc. How the new product and itscorresponding processes influence the existingproduction must also be considered.

The JIT philosophy focuses on flexibility, simplicity,decentralisation, cross-functional improvementsand time effectiveness, and is suitable in specialsituations with repetitive manufacturing orders. It

does not have the answer to all problems, nor doesit have a lot of flexibility to adapt to them. On thecontrary, the theory states that if your premises arenot compatible with the philosophy, then you mustalter them to be more suitable. This is part of thereason why it is necessary to design products, oreven better, family of products, in a modular wayand share the components with as many otherproducts as possible to smoothen demand curvesand reduce total number of components.

To ensure that the new product is suitable for themanufacturing philosophy of the factory, processesand products must be developed in a concurrentand integrated way. This is not easy however,partly because the employees in production are notused to formulate demands to the product in theearly stages of the process. There is therefore aneed for a method describing both what and whento integrate.

3 PROJECT APPROACH AND STATUSThe Research Council categorised the project asuser-controlled, implying that the case companyshould participate in managing and controlling theactivities and focus of the project. This resulted in asolution-oriented approach. Whilst HÅG developedthe new office chair (four years), SINTEF IndustrialManagement had three functions: First theresearchers were engaged to help in thedevelopment of the new and correspondingmanufacturing system. Second, to use Design forManufacturing techniques on parts of the newproduct for test purposes and to achieve ease ofmanufacture. Finally, the last and perhaps mostimportant role was to observe the whole project inorder to discover process potentials and developnew solutions for integrated product- and processdevelopment. In this aspect the project still servesas a case.

HÅG also engaged their main suppliers to securereasonable solutions in the interface between thecompanies. Machinery suppliers where invited toparticipate in the development of the detailedsolutions. The project group first decided whichconcept to elaborate, and then several suppliers oftransport equipment participated with their expertiseby submitting tenders. This unveiled largedifferences in how they understood the job and howthey worked and co-operated in the detailing. Alsothe experience of the supplier and their ability toserve both the installation phase and futuremaintenance tasks was evaluated. Finally adecision was made regarding which supplier toprefer.

Currently the physical development of both the newchair and the manufacturing facility are finished.The new model for working in integrated productdevelopment projects is still under developmentbased on experiences gained in the real case.Previous development projects have also resultedin competitive and profitable products for the

company, and the best aspects from their existingpractice is also included in the new model.

When designing products and processes futureexpenses are defined to a great extent. Customerdemands, and even forecast of future demands,should influence the targets set for the developmentprocess. In the market of the case company, theindividual treatment of every order is crucial, hencethe job was to create a system that would allow thisand still be time- and cost- effective. The well-known method of Andreassen and Hein [3] and theresults from the VSOP for CONCENSUS project [4]are used as a foundation for the development of themodel.

4 PRELIMINARY RESULTSBesides the physical products (office chair andmanufacturing installation) the most important resultis, as mentioned earlier, the experience gained tohelp develop a new way of working within integratedproduct development, focusing on manufacturing.

Four basic changes are necessary to improve theperformance in developing projects at HÅG;• create interdepartmental ownership to the

project• exploit the early phases of the process• introduce a multilevel model for all kinds of

development projects, and• use more tools like i.e. Design for X (logistics)

The project team found that the development of theoffice-chair and the manufacturing system on anaggregated level followed the same process. Thisis however also shown in existing models ofintegrated product development, where thedevelopment tasks are drawn as parallel processes[3], [4]. To get more engagement from themanufacturing department, and hence an early startof their development process, in the prototypemodel the manufacturing system is considered aproduct as well, to strengthen motivation. Thesame goes for the distribution system. One way ofillustrating this is shown in figure 2.

Market,

distr

ibution

Product

Man

ufac

turi

ngsy

stem

Operation,delivery

Figure 2: The Development process includes threephysical systems.

With this way of thinking, it also follows that an ideamight occur in either of the product streams.Regardless of the origin, the other two products areimmediately challenged with respect to their abilityto adapt. The company must check the total costeffectiveness of every idea. For instance, onemight find that a process development projectinfluences the product and challenges itsconceptual structure. Then the company mustconsider redesigning the product to gain benefits oncompany level. Or, a breakthrough in thedistribution process might cause adjustments inboth the chair- and the manufacturing system.

In the case project, focus was on the integrationbetween the primary product and the manufacturingsystem, by nature a two-dimensional configuration.Considering only the sitting and manufacturingproducts, the model in figure 2 might be drawn asfollows.

Market Specifi-cation

Con-sept

Detaildesign

Manu-fac.

Detaildesign

Con-sept

Specifi-cation

Need

Product

Manufacturingprocess

Opera-tion

Deli-very

Idea

Idea

0

I

II

III

IV

Figure 3: Development of two products with focuson integration.

The goal of figure 3 is to indicate a way of workingin developing projects. The boxes on both axes are

just examples of an overall development process,and might be adjusted to fit any company’s existingmodel. The goal is not to develop a new overallproduct development model, but to introducemanufacturing concerns stronger into the existingones.Referring to the previous discussed problems, thisprototype model is representing improvementscompared to the model in use through stimulatingearly phases by increased commitment andindication of what and when to integrate. Followingthe topics of integration, existing tools and methodswill be referred to at the proper stages. It is also animprovement that the different departments easiercan relate to what the others are working on.

The links between the developing paths areconsidered the most important parts in the newmodel, and they all have specific integration tasks.The work on the description of what to integratewhen has started, and a first listing is printed in aSINTEF report [5]. This work is however in the verybeginning, and is not included here.

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKThe project revealed potential improvements in theproduct developing process in use in the casecompany. Expected improvements with theproposed work model are shorter time to market,easier manufacturing implementation and productlaunch phase, more integration between theproduct and process development, and hencehigher profit in the future.

Among the tasks necessary to finish this work are;

• Finish the model with a description of theintegration based on the case project

• Generalise to be more useful in industry• Describe in sub levels the details of the process• It will be crucial to be able to calculate the

consequences decisions have on the totalexpenses and revenues for the company

• Computerise. It follows that the model will havelittle or no use if the information is notaccessible to all participants all the time. Themodel should be used to structure theinformation concerning the product, themanufacturing system and the interfacebetween them.

In addition, these features would be preferable in anew model:

• A new model should be scalable to suit differenttypes of development projects.

• It would, also for teaching purposes, bedesirable to have several levels in the model.This makes it possible to allow a relatively

simple upper level while the details necessaryto perform the work are hidden underneath.

• A new approach should stimulate informationavailability and be a tool in continuosconsequence analysis

6 REFERENCES

[1] HEIN, L. 1993, ”Fitting DFX-tools into theframework of product development”, Notes atthe WDK-Workshop Copenhagen, May 1993

[2] ULLMANN, D., G., The Mechanical Designprocess, Oregon State University, McGraw-Hill, 1992

[3] ANDREASSEN, M.M., HEIN, L., IntegrertProduktutvikling, Universitetsforlaget 1986

[4] GUSTAFSSON, B., VSOP for CONSENSUS,Simuleringsbaserad produktfremtagning,VSOP conference V, IVF, Sweden, Jan. 2000

[5] SKJELSTAD L. et. al. Ny modell for integrertproduktutvikling. SINTEF report nr. STF38A00208 (in Norwegian), Feb. 2000.