ÜRETİM YÖNETİMİ

The Product Life Cycle

Every product has a life span and they are born then they live and die. Every product goes out of the market by changes in the market sooner or later. The lives of products are changing from one product to another, from a few months to several decades. However, the structure of product life cycles are the same for all the products regardless of the length of the cycle. The phases of the products in the product life cycle are birth or introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

The Product Life Cycle

Since companies know that products they sell have a limited lifespan, most of them invest heavily in new product development in order to make sure that their businesses continue to grow.

Product Strategy

Product strategy defines the direction of the product and what the company wants to achieve.

Product Strategy

While companies try to construct strategies for the products in order to be successful in the competitive markets they need to know the activities and responsibilities of product design. So, they become conscious of the value of product design for their customers and themselves. The followings are some of the essential activities and responsibilities of a product design (Stevenson, 2009, p. 132):

Product Development Process

In the product development process, creativity, understanding, communication, testing and persuasion activities are essential for the success. Product development process is separated into three phases (Otto & Wood, 2001, p. 14).

The Design Process

Walsh et al. (1992) identify four “Cs” of design:

The Design Process

In design process creativity, design and innovation terms are used extensively and synonymously. Many countries encourage their own local manufacturers to design new products in order to help companies compete in the global market. Such attempts discover the value of design and promote it as an engine of innovation in products and business processes. Design takes new improved technologies out of research and development and into the market as original and usable products.

The Design Process

The followings are the design principles to simplify the products and processes (Martinich, 1997, p. 219): 1. Minimize the number of parts used 2. Use common components and processes 3. Use standard components and tools 4. Simplify assembly 5. Use modularity to obtain variety 6. Make product specifications and tolerances reasonable 7. Design products to be robust.

The Design Process

Four product design characteristics especially affect the ease and quality of assembly:

Quality Function Deployment

One of the important product design tools is quality function deployment (QFD). It is first used in Japan in the late 1960s as a form of cause-and-effect analysis, and it was brought to the United States in the early 1980s. Most of its popularity comes as a result of numerous successes in the automotive industry. QFD is transferring the voice of the customer to the design specifications of a product. During the implementation of this method multi-disciplinary teams from marketing, design, engineering and manufacturing are used in the organizations. QFD process starts by determining the requirements of the customer then finishes by translating these customer desires into the target design. The idea of QFD is to understand the desires of customers and to identify alternative process solutions. This information is then integrated into the evolving product design. QFD is used early in the design process to determine the needs and requirements of the customer and where to deploy quality efforts.

Product design can bring many opportunities to the company in the competitive market such as increasing market share, new customers and new products. Product design is the process of deciding on the characteristics and features of the company’s product based on customer’s needs and requirements. It is a critical process for a company and uses company’s core competencies and tries to find out the other competencies that must be developed. Moreover, product design causes changes by new products and markets for the rejuvenation of the company.

Many global companies are aware of having products that satisfy the needs and requirements of the customers. Otherwise, the existence and survival of the company are in danger. A good product is one of the essential factors of a company to be successful in the market.

The main purpose of the company is to establish the product as firmly as possible in the market. In this phase, the sales and the profit are rapidly growing. Since the potential of market growth is high, more money is invested in the promotional activities to use this potential.

There are many products in different stages of the product life cycle in the market. The followings are some examples for them:

• 3D TVs in the introduction phase.
• Blu Ray discs in the growth phase.
• DVD and flash disks in the maturity phase.
• Video cassette and floppy disc in the decline phase.

The followings are some of the essential activities and responsibilities of a product design:

• Reflect customer needs and requirements to product requirements
• Refine or modify current products
• Develop new products
• Formulate quality goals and cost targets
• Construct and test prototypes
• Document specifications
• Translate product specifications into process specifications

Product design activity has typically strategic effects for the success and wealth of an organization. Moreover, this activity definitely affects its future plans. Therefore, decisions about design activities must be given by mid or high level managers. Organizations are involved in product design or redesign for different reasons. One of the most important reasons for product design or redesign is to have market opportunities and threats. The factors that give rise to market opportunities and threats can be one or more changes in economy, society and demographic structure of it, policies or liabilities of government, competition, cost structure and technology.

A product development process is a group of activities required to bring a new concept to a state of market readiness. These activities involve everything from the initial inspiring new product vision, to business case analysis activities, marketing efforts, technical engineering design activities, development of manufacturing plans, and the validation of the product design to conform to these plans. Moreover, it even concludes development of the distribution channels for strategically marketing and introducing the new product.

During the design process structures, systems and behaviours produce designs that satisfy the customer at low cost, that are easy to make and that appear in a short time. Walsh et al. (1992) identify four “Cs” of design:

Creativity: Creation of something that has not previously existed.
Complexity: Design includes many decisions for a wide variety of parameters and elements such as shape, texture and color to materials.
Compromise: It is a type of trade-off between some elements and features such
as performance and cost or weight and ease of use.
Choice: It is about coming to decisions on the concept solution to color or form.

Detailed design: After discussions about the final design, agreed design is converted into detailed specifications. Some prototypes of the agreed design are produced and tested.