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How To: Successful Product Change – 3 Tips for Product Change Management

December 6 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Product Design, Product Development, Program Management  |  Comment

Joe Donoghue, San Diego Prototyping, Patents & Prototypes, Live Web Show, Product Development, Engineering Services, Manufacturing, Entrepreneurial Product DevelopmentChange is sometimes the enemy of an efficient and cost effective product development process. While change is inevitable and necessary at times, minimizing unnecessary product change is important to keep the project on schedule and within budget while continuing to meet all the product specifications. There are three true and tried methods that, if implemented in a product development process, will result in a highly effective product change management process.

Communicate the Program Objectives to the Team

Product development can be summarized as a balancing act between the competing constraints of product cost, scope, and schedule. Thousands of decisions are made while a product is under development and the end result is typically a sub-optimal result of these decisions. Since optimization is impossible, it is necessary to prioritize the objectives of the project in order to ensure success. Without prioritization, the individuals working on programs will be pulled in opposing directions and will be continually redirected during the project, resulting in failure. Proper prioritization of product cost, scope, and schedule will result in successful change management.

The three objectives of a program are product cost, product scope, and program schedule.

Product Cost refers to the many financial metrics, including total budget, cost of goods sold, gross margins, or any other financial metrics used on the project.

Product Scope refers to the product features that will be designed into in the final product.

Program Schedule refers to the amount of time available to complete the project.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to change one of these objectives without affecting the others. The cost, scope, and schedule each act as constraints and therefore movement of one affects the others. Hence, to properly communicate the program objectives, a product development team should:

  1. Determine which of the three program objectives is the most important. This chosen objective will be the first program priority that must be constrained and cannot change under any circumstance.
  2. Choose one of the two remaining program objectives that can change but must be held within a range. The second priority should be thought of as an objective that can be modified but should always be kept as close to the goal as possible.
  3. The outcome of the last program objectives will be accepted as is.

Some hard tradeoffs need to be made when prioritizing the program cost, scope, and schedule. By performing this exercise and communicating the priorities, the product development team will be given very clear objectives that allow the members to make their own decisions on the necessity of change knowing the overall program priorities.

The management of these three constraints is sometimes referred to as the project management triangle.

Two of three input factors must be prioritized


The video was produced by J Scott Christianson at http://thefreerangetechnologist.com/ – He has a lot of great project management tips and information on his site.
Product Defects and Issues Drive Change

The product development team should work with the premise that product change is driven only by product defects and issues. The defects can be technical issues or issues raised by anybody on the cross-functional product development team. The technical issues found from the mechanical, electrical, software, firmware, manufacturing, or production teams are obviously product defects that need to be reviewed. Issues from other members of the cross-functional product development team such as marketing, sales, advertising, finance, or field sales need to be considered also. For example, if a new product was introduced in the market with very similar features to your team’s product, then it would be wise to raise a product issue to modify or improve some of the features to differentiate the product. If the product cost was too high and cost was a high priority for the program, it would be necessary to change the product design to minimize the cost. Defects and issues from all the cross-functional members of a product development team can influence change.

Defects and issues can be managed by a complex Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system or a simple spreadsheet. Either way, it is important to document the root cause of the defect, proposed solution of the defect, method of solution verification, and implementation of the solution for completeness and traceability of the defect.

Establish Change Rules

The final method of ensuring a successful product change management solution is to establish rules of changes. If and when a product change is made depends on both the severity of the defect as well as when the defect is found in the product development lifecycle. Product defect severity can be broken down into four categories:

  • Low: Very limited customer impact.
  • Medium: Moderate customer impact.
  • Serious: High customer impact.
  • Critical: Safety or regulatory issue.

The program manager of the product meets with the cross-functional product development team to review each documented issues and defects. As a team, they categorize the defects as either low, medium, serious, or critical. Once the defects are categorized, the team must decide if a change should be made to the product to resolve the issue. The team should have rules in place that determine when the changes should be made depending on where the product lies in the product development lifecycle. Here are some rules of thumb on approving and allowing product changes to take place:

  1. Critical defects should always drive an immediate change and the production line should be shut down if the product is in production.
  2. Serious defects should be fixed as soon as feasible and rolled into prototype testing or production.
  3. Medium severity defects should drive changes the early stages of the product development lifecycle but should not be resolved during production.
  4. Low severity defects should only be fixed in the early prototyping phases and should be ignored in all later stages of the lifecycle.

If the product development team has a rigorous defect review process and change rules, then only necessary changes will result from the product change management system.

Need more information on product change or product development in general? Please contact us with any questions or contact me directly at joseph.donoghue ( at ) leardon.com

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Product Development – The Best Tips for Manufacturing Product Overseas

November 29 2011  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Manufacturing Tips, Product Development  |  Comment

Product Development – The Best Tips For Manufacturing Product Overseas

If you have ever been involved with the design or manufacturing of a product, you were most likely part of a global product development team. Even if the engineering and manufacturing were performed locally, there is no doubt that some of the engineering or part of the supply chain originated from another country. Involvement in product development and manufacturing requires knowledge of the international and global aspects. In particular, if you are currently in production overseas or are thinking of manufacturing overseas, it is necessary to understand and avoid some of these pitfalls that occur in international and global manufacturing.

Cultural Differences

An obvious but overlooked issue when manufacturing product overseas is that the product development team consists of people from different cultures. When integrated effectively, this diverse team is more productive, better problem solvers, and more creative. But to garner these advantages from your global team, there are some important aspects of the different cultures that must be understood.

      • Learn about their history and the impact it has on their current business and political situation.
      • Know which conversation topics that should be avoided such as politics, religious views, or the effectiveness of their management team.
      • Learn about their attention to timeliness and know that it will most likely be different than yours. Tardiness to meetings is not necessarily a sign of disrespect.
      • Know how business deals are performed. Not all business is done in a meeting room. Understand the importance of eating, drinking, and socializing on business dealings.
      • Remember that your sense of humor probably will not translate or could be offensive so don’t make jokes until you know your partner extremely well.

Communication

Communication is an activity that is crucial to the success of societies and organizations. Obviously, it is also extremely important to the success of overseas manufacturing endeavors. Language and time zone differences are two of the common communication pitfalls encountered while manufacturing product overseas .

More than likely, there will be language differences when working with an overseas manufacturing partner. Most manufacturers have individuals who speak the common language of commerce, English, but this doesn’t mean that the communication methods will be clear and concise. Be sure to speak with simple, common phrases and avoid all slang terms or phrases. Back up all conversations with emails that document what was discussed and agreed. This allows the partner to review the discussion at their own pace and perform any translations if necessary.

Unfortunately, most people view time zone differences as a disadvantage to productivity. On the contrary, time zone differences can be an advantage to a product development and manufacturing team if used properly. It is best to think of the time zone differences as a team that is working around the clock to make improvements, to manufacture, and to resolve any issues. To make the difference extremely effective, it is best to have a “hand off” phone conference daily to discuss the issues encountered by the group finishing work for the day. This hand off meeting will occur at the end of the day (EOD) in one location and at the beginning of day (BOD) in the other location. These EOD/BOD meetings should allow the team ending their day to hand off all the issues found to the team starting their day. Any work required such as data collection, testing, or design work can be performed and then handed back off as the teams switch their roles. This is an efficient use of the time zone difference which increases productivity.

 

Design for Manufacturability

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) is a branch of engineering where focus is placed on designing the parts and product so they can be fabricated with a process that is reproducible and repeatable. While there are many commonly accepted DFM rules that are used around the world, many manufacturers have unique rules based on their equipment, tools, operators, and fabrication methods.

When designing and engineering a product, the engineering team should apply commonly accepted DFM rules to the initial designs. Prior to initiating the prototyping and qualification phase of the product, the product development team should identify some of the key manufacturers. These manufacturers should then collaborate with the engineering team and help modify the designs as necessary to incorporate the manufacturer’s custom DFM rules. If the manufacturers are chosen after the prototype and qualification phases, schedule delays and unexpected costs will be the result of the late changes made for design for manufacturability.

Documentation

When all individuals involved in the product development and manufacturing process speak different languages, it is important to have proper documentation in place that describes the product that is being manufactured. There are three types of documentation that are critical to a successful overseas manufacturing arrangement.

(1) The first is engineering documentation that specifies exactly how the product looks, feels, and operates (form, fit, and function). Form and fit documentation includes 2-dimension prints, 3-dimensation computer aided design (CAD) files, electrical schematics, printed circuit board Gerber files, and bill of materials (BOM). Operational specifications call out the functional aspects of the product such as basic function, acceptable operating conditions, and required maintenance.

(2) The second form of documentation required is the manufacturing process documentation. This includes how the product is fabricated, assembled, and tested. Documents such as manufacturing process documents, assembly instructions, test instructions, and approval vendor lists are absolutely necessary to properly document how to fabricate, assemble, and manufacture your product.

(3) The third type of documentation is a defect/issue and change list. The team must document and resolve all issues found with prototypes and production units. Be clear to communicate the product issues with your supplier and work on a corrective action plan to resolve the problems. The corrective action will normally entail a design or process change, so have a change management process in place to be sure the proper approvals take place.

Here are a few links if you are interested in learning more about global product development:

Need more information? Please contact us with any questions or contact me directly at joseph.donoghue ( at ) leardon.com

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