Introduction
Product design is the construction or building of products, which will essentially thrive and enhance the supply chain orientation of a company (Petersen, Handlefield & Ragatz, 2015). Quite literally, it is just giving the customers what they want bearing in mind their satisfaction, in a manner that is resource-effective to the company. The concept of product design is vital in today’s very competitive environment. It is important because new products contribute greatly to the increment of the sales revenue of a firm. The main goal of product design in supply chain and operations is the creation of a product or service bearing exceptional functional utility, plus sales appeal at costs that are very acceptable within the right time frame.
Impact of Product Design on Operations and Supply Chain Strategy
Product design is a significant tool for the coordination of activities that are key to the supply chain participants. In that case, the outsourced production of the sub-assemblies will mean that they have to ask their constituent suppliers to take part in product design. Since product design is an essential process for any firm interested in competing on a global scale, it is then the driving force towards organizational success because it directly affects almost all the crucial determinants of profit maximization (Petersen, Handlefield, and Ragatz, 2015).
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Moreover, Petersen, Handlefield, and Ragatz (2015) argue that it is through the concept of product design that have the ability to make well-informed purchase decisions that are based on factors that influence product design. Unlike before, consumers used to rely on the product quality or product price because such elements as customizability, product safety and order-to-delivery time are vital today.
Nonetheless, environmental concerns today are essential; therefore, the product design activity should be keen to incorporate the effects on the environment during production, life cycle, and their recycle-ability. Furthermore, since consumers are becoming more careful, product design will ensure that the demanded products are not defective and come with lower liability costs. Thus, products that are safer and long lasting can almost warrantee future provision, greatly impacting customer satisfaction. However, the fast-paced technological advancements in supply chain are forcing companies to search and also implement new technologies that will determine techniques of designing new products. It includes the examination of ethical and legal issues that may arise in the process on human consumption and also the impacts on the environment (Chan, Kumar & Tiwari, 2009).
Importance of Product Design Process
Mass customization of products/services
It is the production of goods or services at a very low cost, ensuring high quality of products and also the delivery of large volumes of customized products to the customers. Product design has increasingly enabled customizability in large scale because markets are increasingly becoming segmented but the aggregate demand is still the same. In that regard, companies are forced to continue designing and producing high volumes of differentiated products but to the same asset base (Chan, Kumar & Tiwari, 2009).
Improving designs for manufacturing and assembly
Every firm aims at improving their manufacturability. Systems such as the DFMA (Design for manufacturability and assembly) are core in this endeavor because it centrally focuses on the issues that may arise during product design (Rungtusantham & Forza, 2009). The system is capable of identifying design concepts that would be much easier to build by examining the economic implications of the decisions made. Subsequently, the decisions are critical because they fix up to 90% of the costs associated to manufacturing. In doing so, the company can easily improve its designs for manufacturing and assembly.
Ensuring quality and quality function deployment
According to Rungtusantham & Forza, product design essentially sculptures the quality of a product by defining the way a good/service will function. It ensures that the product that is designed extensively serves its purpose and functioning g at high probability of success and at the same time ensuring that it is reliable. It means that the product/service has the capability of functioning without failure under given circumstances. Furthermore, it will ensure that the quality of the product/service will continue improving in terms of operation or performance characteristics (2005).
Prototyping
Prototypes are working models that have been reduced to scale. Prototyping a product design is core in the endeavor to increase customer satisfaction and also improving the design stability of a product/service. Other key elements that prototyping will help cover are product effectiveness and also product predictability in terms of performance and costs (Rungtusantham & Forza, 2005).
Designing new Products and Production Processes
For a production process to be successful, there has to be improved approaches in the organization of the production process which is fundamental in the reduction of wastes and provision of products that meet consumer desires in response to the global competitive environment. Therefore, both the design of new products and the production process are significant in boosting competitiveness. Thus, it is important that these two elements are integrated to achieve the objective of competitiveness on a global scale (Rungtusantham & Forza, 2005).
Strategic options in process planning (Outsourcing)
Outsourcing is a strategic option in process planning where a company tries to reduce the costs by transferring segments of duties or work to outside service providers rather than overseeing the process to completion internally (Chan, Kumar & Tiwari, 2009). The strategic option has become a very crucial option in today’s competitive markets for those firms that seek to maintain a differentiated kind of focus on their competitive work strategically. Therefore, I find outsourcing to be a very key strategy that companies should use. The underlying reason is that the resource decisions made should always be governed by nature of the skills possessed and the type of work to be done.
Difference between products and services
There are four core differences between a product and a service. First, a service is intangible whereas a product entails physical attributes. Secondly, a service may need the interaction with a consumer for the process to be called a service, whereas, a consumer does not need to be present during the manufacture of a product (Chan, Kumar & Tiwari, 2009).
Additionally, services are inherently heterogeneous apart from services like ATMs and answering machines. It means that services are always dynamic, varying from an hour to another, a day to another. On the other hand, good are designed to meet specific customer specifications. Finally, services are time-dependent and sometimes perishable because services cannot be stored in a facility, unlike goods (Chan, Kumar & Tiwari, 2009).
References
Chan, F.T., Kumar, V., & Tiwari, M.K. (2009). The relevance of outsourcing and agile strategies in performance optimization of an integrated process planning and scheduling model. International Journal Production Research , 47(1), 119-142
Petersen, K.J., Handlefield, R. B., & Ragatz, G.L. (2015). Supplier integration into new development: coordinating product processes and supply chain design. Journal of Operations Management , 23(3),371-388.
Rungtusantham, M., &Forza, C. (2005). Coordinating product design, process design, and supply chain design decisions: Part A: Topic motivation, performance implications, and article review process. Journal of Operations Management , 23(3), 257-265.
