By Kim Robertson and Jon M Quigley When you think of product design and development what comes first to mind? Is it an understanding of our business objectives (scope) followed by functional decomposition of requirements and allocating them to various systems and subsystems to achieve that objective? Is it design to manufacture with designers, facility […]
In our previous post, we have learned the distribution of vehicle preparation time via the visual representation known as the histogram. This does not tell us what causes for the distribution. If we wish to alter this distribution, we will also need to know the causes and take some action to alter. Enter the Ishikawa […]
We would like to revisit our blog post May 2013 and tell the complete story over the course of a few blogs. I realized the importance of showing the use of the variety of tools after giving an ITMPI webinar based upon our book Total Quality Management for Project Management. At the end of the […]
Sometimes it is difficult to speak up when you know you have problems. Not many people want to be the person who is perceived as holding up progress, probably a self-preservation mechanism. However, when it comes to project work and teamwork, we can ill afford to play such games. Enter the game I call “product […]
I recently read a Scott Adams cartoon http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-06-09/ in the Greensboro News and Record Sunday paper and had flash backs to projects that prematurely move to the production phase. Experience indicates that this mentality contributes to the recalls to which the consumers are subjected. Capitalism is based upon the willingness to take risks. There is […]
In the decline phase our rate of growth is now negative sloping. We no longer are garnering more customers and market share but are losing both. We still may be able to eke out a profit, but we will have to work especially hard doing so. If we were forward thinking, we likely have a […]
If we have developed a product that is useful to our clients, our production volumes will grow allowing us to improve our product cost and pricing structures. Additionally, besides the volume purchase of material cost improvements, we will work with our manufacturing line, improving those processes and subsequent first pass yields thereby reducing the associated […]
In our previous blog, we developed a product that was based on market research and perceived opportunity. We have tested that product both from the market perspective and the quality expectations from the customer and our own business case requirements. Now it is time to make the product available to our clientele. We are concerned […]
Our previous blogs have been largely on product development issues. We realized that we really have not discussed the product development life cycle in depth. One model of the Product Development Life Cycle is illustrated below. Our next series of blogs will cover the product development life cycle from this perspective: Development Introduction Growth Maturity […]
I have been brought back to this topic many times over the past few months. Hits production is sort of like “hitting the fan.” We release our product after development and then put our fingers in our ears hoping to not hear the metaphoric explosion at the plant. It is no wonder. We have the […]