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GENERAL INFORMATION

Instructor:
James R. Wixson, CVS-Life, CMfgE

Course Objectives

The focus of Product Design and Development is integration of the marketing, design, and manufacturing functions of the firm in creating a new product. The course is intended to provide you with the following benefits:

• Competence with a set of tools and methods for product design and development.
• Confidence in your own abilities to create a new product.
• Awareness of the role of multiple functions in creating a new product (e.g. marketing, finance, industrial design, engineering, production).
• Ability to coordinate multiple, interdisciplinary tasks in order to achieve a common objective.
• Reinforcement of specific knowledge from other courses through practice and reflection in an action-oriented setting.

Expectations

This is a 3 semester credit jointly listed undergraduate/ graduate course. Accordingly, the course has been designed to demand approximately 12 hours per week of your time. It is expected that each student will prepare for and attend all of the class sessions and will contribute regularly and substantially to their team project. Experience with project-based design courses is that students often develop high expectations for their projects and devote substantially more time than is required by the instructors. I applaud this enthusiasm, but this course will not penalize students who establish a twelve hour per week average time constraint for their efforts. The workload for the course is fairly smooth, with increased project effort at the end of the semester offset by lighter preparation for class.

Grading

Grades are based on a percentage of total points, i.e., A - 90%, B- 80%, C-70%.  The following is a breakdown of the grading for this class:

• Quizzes - 1400 pts
• Attendance and Participation - 200 pts
• Project Proposal - 200 pts
• Mission and Customer Needs list - 200 pts
• Concept Sketches and Target Specifications - 200 pts
• Drawings, Plans, and Revised Schedule - 200 pts
• Financial Model and Patent Review - 200 pts
• Alpha Prototype - 500 pts
• Final Presentation and Demonstration - 500 pts
• Final Exam - 400 pts

Total Possible Points: 4,000

Academic Integrity

Full group and class collaboration on all aspects of this course is highly encouraged. It is almost impossible to share too much information in product development teams.  Individual work is required on all quizzes and exams.  In these instances, the University of Idaho policies for academic honesty apply.

Reading Materials

The primary reading materials for the class are the books Product Design and Development (3rd Edition, 2004), written by Profs. Ulrich and Eppinger,  and Value Engineering: A Plan for Invention written by Richard Park, and a reading packet. The text is available at the University of Idaho Bookstores, MIT Coop, MIT Press, and through internet booksellers. The reading packet and all readings will be handed out in class. Handouts of additional readings will be distributed in class, or be made available on this website in *.pdf format. Also, visit Ken Crow's New Product Development Body of Knowledge on the web at http://www.npd-solutions.com/bok.html#anchor2114450 .  This is an extensive web site full of all of the techniques discussed in this class, and then some.

Class Preparation and Participation

Reading assignments are given in the Class Schedule for each class session. You are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the readings and the suggested questions. Your individual class participation grade will be based upon your in-class remarks during discussions and on quizzes to be given nearly each week.

Projects

Your challenge in the project portion of this course is to design a new product and to produce a prototype version of it. The goal of this exercise is to learn principles and methods of product development in a realistic context. Most product development professionals work under tremendous time pressure and do not have an opportunity to reflect on the development process. In this course, the project stress level will be low enough that there will be time to experiment and learn. Project ideas come from the students in the class and from opportunities presented by industrial sponsors. Guidelines for reasonable projects are given below. The project proposal process is explained in the Project Schedule section of this syllabus.

Project Teams

In the second week of the course, we will form project teams on the basis of expressed student preferences (see the Project Schedule for details). Since classes at the U of I Idaho Falls campus are usually fairly small, we will determine if more than one team is needed at this time. Once you are assigned to a project team, we expect you to stay with this team for the entire term.  Participation will be graded according to the initiative and level of collaboration each student exhibits on this team.

Project Materials and Expenses

There is a limited amount of funds to cover students’ out-of-pocket expenses related to the course projects. We will discuss this topic in class.  In the U of I case, reimbursement for supplies for the project will not be available through the University.  Therefore, your team is expected to cover these expenses personally.  It is expected that the cost of materials should be minimal for these projects, therefore, there is a limit of $100 per person maximum for materials.  It is the team's challenge to identify the required funding early so they can procure the required materials for their prototype design.  Examples of previous projects are available on the MIT OpenCourseWare website and from this website on the Projects link.

Intellectual Property Rights

The student teams will generally be able to retain the rights to any inventions they develop in this course. If a team should decide to pursue a patent, they may do this on their own. Teams should spend some time during an early meeting agreeing in advance on how to distribute any economic rewards arising from the intellectual property you create, if any. Your project assignments will serve as a dated record of the evolution of your ideas.

Guidelines for Projects

While special cases will be considered, you are strongly encouraged to choose a project satisfying all of the following constraints:

• There should be a demonstrable market for the product. One good way to verify a market need is to identify existing products that attempt to meet the need. Your product need not be a variant of an existing product, but the market need addressed by your product should be clearly evident. The product does not need to have a tremendous economic potential, but should at least be an attractive opportunity for an established firm with related products and/or skills.
• Most products developed in this class are material goods and not services. While many of the ideas in the course apply to services and software products (for example, customer needs and product architecture), many do not (for example, design for manufacturing). Nevertheless, the faculty are willing to hear project proposals from students interested in developing software, services, and internet based enterprises.
• The product should have a high likelihood of containing fewer than 10 parts. Although you cannot anticipate the design details, it is easy to anticipate that an electric drill will have more than 10 parts and that a garlic press can have fewer than 10.
• You should be confident of being able to prototype the product for less than $100 per student. For example, a razor like Gillette’s Mach3 may have about 10 parts, but would require tens of thousands of dollars to create a geometrically accurate prototype.
• The product should require no basic technological breakthroughs. (Yes, a more compact airbag would be a nice, but can you do it without inventing a new chemical?) You do not have time to deal with large technological uncertainties.
• You should have access to more than five potential lead users of the product (more than 20 would be nice). These potential users should be in the Eastern Idaho area so that reasearch on these users is feasible. This is criteria that will limit your choice of projects. 

A few more hints:

• Save any highly proprietary ideas for another context; we will be quite open in discussing the projects in class and do not wish to be constrained by proprietary information.
• Most successful projects tend to have at least one team member with strong personal interest in the target market.
• It is really nice to have a connection to a commercial venture that may be interested in the product. (One group signed a licensing agreement with a major mail order and retail company with which they had made contact during the first week of the course. The product they developed became a commercial success.)  This may also be a source of funding for your project.
• Most products are really not very well designed. This is evidenced by the seemingly poor quality of common consumer products (utility knives, garlic presses, and ice cream scoops, for example). The experience in this class is that if you pick almost any product satisfying the above project guidelines, you will be able to develop a product that is superior to everything currently on the market. A book titled THE DESIGN OF EVERYDAY THINGS by Donald A. Norman (Doubleday, 1990) discusses good and bad examples and provides principles and guidelines for good design.
• Just because you have used a lousy product doesn't mean that a better one doesn't exist. Do some thorough research to identify competitive products and solutions.

Some Project Examples from Previous Classes:

(See the MIT OpenCourseWare web site for a larger list and photo gallery.)

All assignments must be handed in at the beginning of the class session in which they are due. Note that these assignments are intended to pace the development process for your product. There is virtually no slack in this schedule and so assignments must be completed on or before the scheduled due date in order to maintain the project schedule. All assignments except the project proposal are to be completed as a team.

Individual Assignment: Project Proposal

Part 1: Proposal Handout

Prepare a project proposal in any format that fits on one 8.5x11 page (one side only).  We will photocopy the proposals and distribute them in Class 4 (the same day). If you miss the morning deadline, you must bring 15 copies to class. Proposals should include:

• A brief, descriptive project title (2-4 words). This is critical!
• Your name, phone number, email, department/degree program, and year.
• A description of the product opportunity you have identified. Your description may include any of the following: documentation of the market need, shortcomings of existing competitive products, and definition of the target market and its size.
• Please do not present any of your own product ideas at this point ; our strict focus in this phase of the course is on the market opportunity and not on solution concepts.

Part 2: Proposal Presentation Due Class 2

Prepare a 60-second presentation to be delivered in class. Your presentation should include:

• Your name, department/degree program, and year.
• A verbal or visual demonstration of the product opportunity you have described in your proposal. Given that the audience will be able to read your proposal at their leisure, you might spend your time explaining the richness of the market opportunity and demonstrating the existing competitive products.
• Any special skills or assets you have (marketing expertise, access to a shop, a car, electronics wizardry, etc.)
• Showing one or two overhead slides is recommended. You may also use video. However, note that the 60-second time constraint will be ruthlessly enforced. (Think about how much can be presented in two 30-second television commercials.)

Part 3: Project Preferences

Submit your project preferences on a project 3" X 5" selection card. List the projects (up to 10)  you would most like to work on, in order of preference. The project each team is to work on will be decided from among the individual proposal presentations presented in Class 4.  (NOTE:  The project selection methodology depends on class size.  Since the U of I classes are usually quite small, I may use some alternate method of project selection.  I think listing the projects on 3" X 5" cards and selecting the most popular project will work well here.)

Guidelines for Team Assignments

Please adhere to the following guidelines for your team assignments:

• Be concise. Most assignments can be completed in very few pages. One exception to this guideline is concept sketches, which should be formatted with one concept per page.
• Please provide a short (less than one page) description of the process your group adopted in completing the assignment. However, there is no need to repeat a summary of the textbook if you adopt the exact approach in the text. Also comment on what worked well and what did not.
• Hand in two copies for your team so that two of the course faculty can provide comments. Keep a copy for your records.
• Black ink is preferable to blue ink or pencil for most assignments. (This is because some assignments are photocopied.) However, if the use of color is important to your presentation, please feel free violate this guideline. To facilitate copying, please use standard 8.5x11 sheets of paper, single sided, whenever possible.

Assignment: Mission Statement and Customer Needs List Due Class 3

Hand in a mission statement and an organized list of customer needs for your product as described in CHAPTERS 3 and 4.

• Describe your team's processes for getting organized and for identifying customer needs. Comment on this process and on your results.
• You do not need to have completed an importance survey by this time, although if you feel the need to further understand preferences and tradeoffs, you should do this soon and turn it in for review.

Assignment: Concept Sketches and Target Specifications Due Class 4

Hand in sketches and bullet-point descriptions of 10 to 20 alternative concepts for your product. For each sketch, note which of the important customer needs it addresses and which it does not.

• Choose a few (perhaps 3 or 4) critical customer needs from your list. For these critical few, prepare a list of the target specifications and provide documentation to support these decisions.
• Describe some of the steps of your concept generation and target specifications processes. Comment on the process and the results.

Assignment: Preliminary Concept Selection Due Class 5

• Hand in sketches of the two or three concepts you believe are most promising.
• Show the concept selection matrix (screening or scoring) that you used to make these choices.
• Include a simple description or sketch of each of the concept alternatives considered.
• Prepare a list of the key uncertainties or questions you still need to address to determine the viability of your product. For each one, specify an associated plan of action (such as analysis, mock ups, interviews, experiments, etc.)
• Describe your team's process. Comment on the process and the results.

Assignment: Review: Final Concept, Model, and Schedule Due Class 6

• Prepare a 10-minute (maximum) presentation of your (single) selected product concept. The presentation should include a review of your mission statement, customer needs, selected concept, and your key target specifications.
• As part of your presentation, demonstrate some form of “proof-of-concept” prototype model.
• Hand in a one-page description and sketch of your selected concept.
• Draft a schedule in Gantt-chart form (see page 326 of the text) showing the plan of work to complete the project over the next two months. Include at least the following activities: detail design, materials and components selection, vendor selection, procurement of materials and components, testing, and completion of assignments. Hand in this schedule—you do not need to make it part of your presentation in class.
• Describe your team's process. Comment on the process and the results.

Assignment: Drawings, Plans, and Revised Schedule Due Class 7

• Prepare an assembly drawing of the alpha prototype you intend to build. An assembly drawing shows all the parts in their assembled positions.
• Prepare dimensioned sketches of each piece part for your planned prototype.
• Include a bill of materials indicating whether the prototype parts will be purchased or fabricated, and a description of the assembly process. Indicate the material and fabrication process you have selected for each prototype part.
• Provide photocopies of the vendor specification sheets for the purchased materials and components. On catalog pages, identify which items you have selected for purchase.
• List the web resources and vendors you have found to be helpful.
• Make a drawing or sketch of the production version of the product. Describe the differences between the prototype you will build and the production product. Briefly explain how the production product would be manufactured.
• Summarize the important decisions you have made since the previous assignment. Describe your prototyping plans. (By this time, you should have price quotes and should be ready to place orders for any parts to be fabricated or purchased.
• Revise the schedule of your project work for the remaining weeks. Include your planned design work, vendor interactions, prototyping, testing, redesign, photography, and preparation of the presentation.
• Describe your team's process. Comment on the process and the results.
• Solidworks and ProEngineer CAD software is available for your use. See the course web page for instructions to access the software. However, you may use any drawing package available to you.

Assignment: Financial Model Due Class 8

• Prepare a financial model as described in CHAPTER 13 of the text. Document the assumptions you have made in the analysis. Perform a sensitivity analysis of the key economic uncertainties you face. Note that you will require estimates for the production tooling and variable costs.
• Describe your team's process, including a brief status report on your prototyping and testing progress.

Optional Assignment: Patent Review Due Class 8 also

• Prepare background information for our patent attorney to review. To do this, you need to explain what invention within your product may be patentable.
• Include a statement of the invention's novelty, utility, and non-obviousness.
• Provide references to any US patents related to your invention.

Assignment: Alpha Prototype Due Class 11

• You should be testing your product prototype by this time. Show your prototype hardware to the course faculty this week and get some feedback. No report is to be turned in this week.

Assignment: Final Presentation and Demonstration Due Tuesday December 14

• Prepare a 15-minute presentation describing and demonstrating your product. Your presentation should concentrate on the product itself, although you may wish to emphasize any particularly impressive portions of your development process. An effective presentation includes color photographs or video presentation along with a live display of the hardware. This presentation should be of the quality you would make to convince a top management group to purchase the rights to your product or to fund its final development and launch. A panel of experts will observe your presentations and evaluate the products. Be prepared to answer questions about all aspects of your project.
• Create and demonstrate a web page designed to promote your product (optional).
• Turn in a copy of the slide presentation, URL of the web page, and several highquality digital photos or 35mm slides of the prototype hardware (including photos of the product in use, if possible).

Project Timeline

Here is a Gantt Chart showing the types of project activity underway during the project.

READING PACKET TABLE OF CONTENTS

‡ Readings identified with ‡ symbol will be handed out in class.

The other required readings for this course are found in the textbook:

Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger, Product Design and Development, 2nd Edition, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2000.