scholarly journals INTRODUCING A FRAMEWORK TO GENERATE AND EVALUATE THE COST EFFECTS OF PRODUCT (FAMILY) CONCEPTS

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1907-1916
Author(s):  
Kai G. Mertens ◽  
Mark Schmidt ◽  
Tugba Yildiz ◽  
Matthias Meyer

AbstractProduct concept generation and evaluation are critical for the success of new product developments (NPD) because managers need to select the most profitable product concepts. However, current approaches can be restricted to single products and do not cover product families' effects. Similarly, they do not necessarily capture all requirements and usually lack extensive cost analyses. Thus, this paper proposes a framework supporting product concept generation and evaluation by providing an accessible conceptualization to overcome the limitations. Using the so-called Extended Axiomatic Design (EAD) supports designers and managers to configure the requirements across product concepts' various domains while concurrently evaluating their economic consequences. The study applies the framework on a simplified case of a bottle manufacturer to conceptualize four product concepts. The case illustrates how the EAD can be used as a virtual testbed to generate and evaluate new product concepts. Finally, designers and managers can make more informed decisions about product concepts by considering their economic and engineering selection criteria to select the most profitable NPD project configuration.

1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O. Bearden ◽  
Terence A. Shimp

Two field experiments were conducted to explore the effects of varying levels of product warranty, manufacturer reputation, and price on consumers’ risk perceptions and affective responses to new product concepts. Data were collected from a consumer panel in a new product concept test format for a tire product and for a computerized exercise device. Results from structural equation analyses reveal the important role of warranties and other extrinsic cues in reducing consumers’ risk perceptions and enhancing their affective responses to innovative product concepts.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
SaEd M. Salhieh ◽  
Mira Y. Al-Harris

New product concept development is considered to be a critical step and the main determinant for the success or failure of new product development. This paper introduces a new methodology for the evaluation and selection of new product concepts using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Conjoint Analysis (CA). The proposed methodology integrates customer perceived value of the new product concepts through the use of CA and uses this perceived value as a measure for the new concepts performance. In addition, the methodology takes into account the development burden that a company has to perform to bring the new concept into a state of market readiness. This development burden is estimated by determining two main factors, namely the burden to produce and the burden to sell the new product concept. The customer perceived value and the development burden are both used in DEA to evaluate the new product concepts resulting in the selection of the best product concept. The applicability of the proposed methodology is illustrated through a case study. Keywords: Product development, concept selection, data envelopment analysis, conjoint analysis.


1998 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sridhar Kota ◽  
Kannan Sethuraman ◽  
Raymond Miller

Many companies develop a market strategy built around a family of products. These companies regularly add new product variations to the family in order to meet changing market needs or to attract a broader customer base. Although the core functionality remains essentially unchanged across the products within a family, new functions, feature combinations and technologies are incorporated into each new product. If allowed to grow unchecked, these component variations, commonly referred to as “complexity”, can result in a loss of productivity or quality. The challenge lies in an effective management of product variations in the design studio and on the manufacturing floor. The key is to minimize non-value added variations across models within a product family without limiting customer choices. In this paper we discuss the factors that contribute to product complexity in general, and present an objective measure, called the Product Line Commonality Index, to capture the level of component commonality in a product family. Through our Walkman case study, we present a simple yet powerful method of benchmarking product families1. This method gauges the family’s ability to share parts effectively (modularity) and to reduce the total number of parts (multi-functionality). [S1050-0472(00)02704-5]


Author(s):  
Yoram Reich ◽  
Amir Ziv-Av

Concept design is the most critical step in product development. To a large extent, its quality determines the fate of the product. Support for concept generation is mainly intuitive beside few recent attempts to develop concept generation support methods. In this paper, we review and exemplify the importance of quality product concepts and the available literature on concept generation. We present a framework that is simple yet comprehensive for generating optimal concepts in diverse disciplines. The framework rests on a method for optimal concept generation that has sound mathematical foundation. The method has been evolved and refined over years of practical experience and research. The present version has been used in numerous successful real projects. We illustrate the use of the framework in two case studies and explain the sources of its generality. The framework is flexible thus can accommodate diverse design concerns as well as model concept design in the context of new business practices such as outsourcing.


Author(s):  
Tarang Parashar ◽  
Katie Grantham Lough ◽  
Robert B. Stone

This paper presents a part count tool that automates the consideration of manufacturing cost during the conceptual design phase by predicting part count for a particular product concept. With an approximate number of parts per product in the conceptual design phase, the designer can estimate the cost associated with the product. On the basis of the cost, the designer can make changes according to budget requirements. The part count tool will also aid in ranking the design concepts by number of components for a product. This tool utilizes existing automated concept generation algorithms to generate the design concepts. It extracts the available data from the Missouri S&T Design Repository to compute an average number of parts per component type in the repository and then calculates an average part count for new concepts. This data can subsequently be used by designers to estimate product cost. The part count tool also uses an algorithm to determine how to connect two non compatible components through the addition of mutually compatible components. While emphasis is placed on the average parts per product in evaluating designs, the overall functional requirement of the product is also considered.


1979 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan D. Shocker ◽  
V. Srinivasan

Multiattribute research in marketing seeks an understanding of the structure of customer decisions with respect to the market offerings of a firm and its competitors. Through such understanding the firm trys to evaluate and/or design its offerings for greater customer satisfaction and profitability. Recent applications of such research to new product evaluation and to concept generation are reviewed and critiqued, relevant methodologies are contrasted, and the import of this research thrust for management is assessed.


Author(s):  
A. Bryan ◽  
S. J. Hu ◽  
Y. Koren

The need to cost effectively introduce new generations of product families within ever decreasing time frames have led manufacturers to seek product development strategies with a multigenerational outlook. Co-evolution of product families and assembly systems is a methodology that leads to the simultaneous design of several generations of product families and reconfigurable assembly systems that optimize life cycle costs. Two strategies that are necessary for the implementation of the co-evolution of product families and assembly systems methodology are: (1) The concurrent design of product families and assembly systems and (2) Assembly system reconfiguration planning (ASRP). ASRP is used for the determination of the assembly system reconfiguration plans that minimize the cost of producing several generations of product families. More specifically, the objective of ASRP is to minimize the net present cost of producing successive generations of products. This paper introduces a method for finding optimum solutions to the ASRP problem. The solution methodology involves the generation of a staged network of assembly system plans for all the generations that the product family is expected to be produced. Each stage in the network represents a generation that the product family is produced, while each state within a stage represents a potential assembly system configuration. A novel algorithm for generating the states (i.e. assembly system configurations) within each generation is also introduced. A dynamic program is used to find the cost minimizing path through the network. An example is used to demonstrate the implementation of the ASRP methodology.


2012 ◽  
Vol 490-495 ◽  
pp. 2160-2164
Author(s):  
Li Lin ◽  
Gang Guo

Product concept generation and concept design are major activities for obtaining an optimal concept in new product development (NPD). A customer requirements driving new product concept generation method is addressed in this paper. This study proposes a new method to generate product concept, through which NPD team acquire customers’ requirement and product attributes. The new method is based on integrating of Naïve Bayes cluster and rough set theory (RST). It takes marketing strategy, business strategy into consideration, which makes new product development more effective compared with the traditional method. We believe that the proposed method will have a positive significance on the future new product development


2011 ◽  
Vol 383-390 ◽  
pp. 4594-4602
Author(s):  
M. C. Ang ◽  
A. McKay ◽  
K.W. Ng

The task of designing product forms is becoming increasingly challenging as consumers demand visually pleasing products that meet functional requirements. Researchers have been working on product concept generation systems that support designers in exploring design spaces to produce large numbers of product concepts from which possible solutions can be selected and developed. Such systems typically utilize the searching capabilities of metaheuristic techniques to explore solution spaces and generate variations of product forms. Recent research work in this domain has focused on hybrid approaches that combine metaheuristic techniques with other methods such as shape description and neural network approaches. This paper provides a review of the application, effectiveness and prospects for these approaches.


Author(s):  
Bethany M. Byron ◽  
Steven B. Shooter

The field of new product development has a number of difficult challenges with which it must contend: shortened production time, greater market share demand, and geographically dispersed teams. Several software systems have been developed to ease these challenges. A representative cross-section of work in the fields of document management, project management, product lifecycle management, and conceptual and family design is examined, including past and current academic work and commercially available software. The scope and features of these projects are examined and compared on a software taxonomy. The potential application of these systems to product families is discussed throughout.


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