Product Development: A Structured Approach to Design and Manufacture

425 Pages·2008·7.69 MB·English

by  Anil Mital

Preface
Manufacturing is essential for generating wealth and improving the standard of living. Histori-
cally, developed countries have devoted at least 20% of their gross domestic product (GDP)
to manufacturing. It is unlikely that any nation would achieve the “developed” status without a
signifi cant proportion of its GDP-related activities devoted to manufacturing. Furthermore, the
manufacturing activities must culminate in production of high-quality products that people need
and want, globally. The emphasis on a global market is critical in today’s economy, characterized
by shrinking national boundaries and globalization of the marketplace. Not only should the prod-
ucts manufactured be wanted, these should be high-quality products that are reliable, economical,
and easy to use and produce, and are brought to the market in a timely manner.
Efforts to develop, design, and manufacture a consumer product knowledge base, by and large,
have been fragmented and can be categorized into two main domains. The fi rst domain primarily
comprises product developers who emphasize issues such as identifying the market, defi ning
product features, and developing promotional strategies for the market. The second domain com-
prises mainly manufacturing and design engineers involved in the technical details of product
design and manufacture. In this context, the emphasis to date has been on only manufacturing
processes; to a very limited extent engineers have focused on issues of product assembly and
maintenance.
As is evident, the development, design, and manufacture of consumer products entails not only
the interests of people in both domains but also those of the consumer and the user (the two are
not necessarily the same). Among their interests are attributes such as a product’s usability, its
functionality, and how its function can be maintained and repaired. From the design and manu-
facturing perspective, there are many other important considerations, such as how the product
components are assembled, how the product will be disassembled during the course of routine
maintenance or troubleshooting and at the end of its life, and how the material-manufacturing-cost
confi guration will be optimized. Such a comprehensive approach to product development, design,
and manufacture is lacking at present. Also, no books are available that propagate teaching such
a comprehensive product development and design approach.
This book provides a comprehensive approach to product development, design, and manufac-
ture and attempts to fi ll the existing void. While this comprehensive approach has been outlined
in archival research publications and taught at the University of Cincinnati at the graduate level
in its College of Engineering, it is yet to become widely available to students at large. This book
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xvi Preface
is intended to share our perspective on the entire product “development to manufacture” spectrum
and emphasizes the “how-to” process.
Chapters 1 through 3 outline the importance of manufacturing in the global economy, what
kinds of products to develop, and what is the general product design process. In other words, they
discuss why manufacture, what to manufacture, and how to design what to manufacture. Then
Chapters 4 through 10 discuss and describe specifi c methodologies dealing with the selection of
material and processes, and designing products for quality, assembly and disassembly, mainte-
nance, functionality, and usability. In Chapters 11 through 13, we cover some basics of manu-
facturing cost estimation, assessing (forecasting) market demand, and developing preliminary
design of the facility to manufacture the developed product. While not directly related to product
development and design, we consider this information critical in the overall product manufacture
cycle.
While this book is intended for senior and starting level graduate students, it should prove
useful to any product designer interested in cradle-to-grave design. It should be particularly useful
to all design and manufacturing engineers, production engineers, and product design researchers
and practitioners.
We wish to thank our numerous colleagues and many former students who have encouraged
us to undertake the writing of this book, telling us time and again how much such an effort was
needed. We hope we have not failed them and have met their expectations, partially if not
fully.
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Biographical Sketches
Anil Mital is Professor of Manufacturing Design and Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
He is also the former Professor and Director of Industrial Engineering and a Professor of Physical
Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Mital is the founding Editor-in-
Chief Emeritus of Elsevier’s International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics and is the founding
Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Industrial Engineering — Theory, Applications,
and Practice. Dr. Mital has authored and coauthored nearly 500 publications, including 200
journal articles and 23 books. He has made over 200 technical presentations in various parts of
the world. He frequently conducts seminars in different countries on a wide range of topics, such
as work design, engineering economy, facilities planning, human-centered manufacturing, ergo-
nomics, and product design. Dr. Mital is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)
and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). He also is a recipient of IIE’s David
F. Baker Distinguished Research Award, HFES’s Paul M. Fitts Educational Award, and the
Society of Automotive Engineers’ Ralph Teetor Educational Award. Dr. Mital has been recog-
nized by the Engineering Economy Division of IIE through its Eugene Grant Award and by the
Society of Work Sciences through its M. M. Ayoub Award.
Anoop Desai is an Assistant Professor in the College of Science and Technology at Georgia
Southern University, Statesboro. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and manufacturing engineer-
ing from the University of Cincinnati in 2006. Dr. Desai’s main research interests are product
life-cycle management and design. His research deals extensively with Design for “X” principles,
focusing primarily on green design, environment conscious manufacturing, and design and main-
tainability. He also is actively involved in research and teaching related to different aspects of
engineering economy and new product development. Dr. Desai has written over 25 articles,
including 13 journal papers, and his research work has been widely cited.
Anand Subramanian is a Senior Engineer at JFAssociates, Inc., based in the Washington,
D.C., area. He received his doctoral and masters degrees in Industrial Engineering from the Uni-
versity of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a bachelors degree in Production Engineering from the University
of Bombay, India. Dr. Subramanian has been associated with JFAssociates, Inc., since 2003,
where his responsibilities include experimental design, data collection, statistical data analysis,
and data interpretation and documentation. His areas of expertise include ergonomic evaluations,
economic analyses, facilities planning, warehouse design, and time and motion studies. He
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xviii Biographical Sketches
co authored a number of journal publications and made presentations at a number of industrial
engineering conferences.
Aashi Mital currently is pursuing degrees in Finance and Political Science at the University
of Cincinnati. Her areas of interest include fi nance and accounting as well as journalism. She also
enjoys history and the performing arts, including the theater, the opera, and dance.
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Chapter 1
The Signifi cance of Manufacturing
1.1 GLOBALIZATION AND THE WORLD ECONOMY
Globalization of the marketplace is synonymous, or akin, to free fl ow of goods and services, labor
and capital around the world. Aided by huge improvements in global communication and the
transport industry, the barriers to free trade are being eroded and most countries are advancing
well on the path to embracing market capitalism. This includes not only traditional capitalists,
such as the United States and United Kingdom, but communist giants such as China and social
republics such as India. In countries such as China, India, and Brazil, large pools of inexpensive
and relatively skilled workers are putting pressure on jobs and wages in rich countries in Europe
and North America. For consumers, the benefi ts of free trade are refl ected in cheaper and better
quality imports, giving them more for their money. This, in turn, forces the domestic producers
to become increasingly more competitive by raising their productivity and producing goods that
can be marketed overseas.
For a long time, the West (North America and Western Europe) dominated the world economy
by accounting for most of the global output of products and services. This picture has undergone
a major change in the last few years; and currently over half the global economic output, measured
in purchasing-power parity (to allow for lower prices in economically poorer countries), is
accounted for by the emerging world. Even in terms of GDP (gross domestic product), the emerg-
ing world countries (also referred to as the Third World or poor countries) account for nearly one
third the total global output and more than half the growth in global output. The trend clearly
indicates that economic power is shifting from the countries of the West to emerging ones in Asia
(King and Henry, 2006; Oppenheimer, 2006). At the present time, developing countries consume
more than half the world’s energy and hold most of the foreign-exchange reserves; China leads
the pack, with nearly $1 trillion US in foreign-exchange reserves. The exports of emerging
economies in 2006 were well over 40% of total global exports. Clearly, this growth in the emerg-
ing world countries, in turn, accelerated demand for products and services from traditionally
“developed” countries. Globalization, therefore, is not a zero-sum game: China, India, Brazil,
Mexico, Russia, and Korea are not growing at the expense of Western Europe and North America.
As individuals in emerging economies get richer, their need and demand for products and services
continue to grow.
As the emerging economies have become integrated in the global economy, the western coun-
tries’ dominance over the global economy has weakened. Increasingly, the current boost to global
1
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2 The Signifi cance of Manufacturing
economy is coming from emerging economies, and rich countries no longer dominate it. With
time, the industrial growth in the developing countries, as indicated by the growth in energy
demand (oil), is getting stronger. Figure 1.1 shows emerging economies in comparison to the
whole world using a number of measures. For instance, growth in emerging economies has
accounted for nearly four fi fths of the growth in demand for oil in the past fi ve years. Further,
the gap between the emerging economies and developed economies (defi ned by membership in
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development prior to 1994), when expressed in
terms of percentage GDP increase over the prior year (growth rate), has widened (Figure 1.2): In
the last fi ve years, the emerging economies have averaged nearly 7% annual growth in GDP
compared to just over 2% for the developed economies. Figure 1.3, for instance, shows the trend
in the U.S. GDP growth. If such trends continue, the bulk of the future global output, as much
as nearly two thirds, will come from emerging economies.
Stockmarket capitalization
GDP at market exchange rates
Exports
GDP
Energy consumption
Foreign-exchange reserves
Population
0 20 40 60 80 100
Figure 1.1 Emerging economies as a percent of the world total (adapted from The Economist, September 14, 2006).
8
7 r
e
Emerging economies rli
6 ea
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5 y
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4 P
D
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3 n
e i
Developed s
economies 2 ea
r
c
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1 % i
0
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Figure 1.2 GDP growth rate of emerging economies versus developed economies (adapted from International
Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook, 2006).
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Globalization and the World Economy 3
4
3.5
%)
h (
3 owt
gr
P
D
G
2.5
2
1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 2006
Figure 1.3 United States GDP growth in recent years.
When the current and anticipated future GDP growth are put in historical perspective, the
post-World War II economic growth and the growth during the Industrial Revolution appear to
be extremely slow. It would be fair to say that the world has never witnessed the pace in economic
growth it is undergoing now. Owing to lower wages and reduced capital per worker, the develop-
ing economies have the potential for raising productivity and wealth much faster than the historic
precedent. This is particularly true in situations where the know-how and equipment are readily
available, for instance, in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (also known by the acronym BRIC).
Associated with fast economic growth are higher living standards for the masses and greater
buying power. While, on one hand, this has increased the global demand for products and services,
on the other hand, it has created a fear of job and industrial output migration to less capital-inten-
sive emerging economies. Such fears are baseless, as the increased demand in emerging econo-
mies is creating greater demand for products and services from both internal and external sources
in the newly developing markets. The huge and expanding middle-class markets in China and
India just prove the point. It is anticipated that the global marketplace will add more than a billion
new consumers within the next decade. And, as these consumers mature and become richer, they
spend increasingly more on nonessentials, becoming an increasingly more important market to
developed economies (Ahya et al., 2006).
While the integration of emerging economies is resulting in redistribution of income worldwide
and a lowering of the bargaining power (lowering of wages and shifting of jobs to low-wage
countries) of workers in the West, it should be realized that emerging economies do not substitute
for output in the developed economies. Instead, developing economies boost incomes in the
developed world by supplying cheaper consumer goods, such as microwave ovens, televisions,
and computers through large multinationals and by motivating productivity growth in the West
through competition. As a whole, growth in emerging economies will make the developed coun-
tries better off in the long run. Combined with innovation, management, productivity improve-
ments, and development of new technologies, the developed economies can continue to create
new jobs and maintain their wage structure. If the wages remain stagnant or rise more slowly,
this would have more to do with increasing corporate profi t than competition from emerging
economies. Figure 1.4 makes the point that corporate profi ts in the G7 countries have been
increasing in the last four decades (Union Bank of Switzerland, 2006; Artus, 2006). Increased
competition, however, should reduce profi ts and distribute benefi ts to consumers and workers
over a period of time. An estimate by the Institute for International Economics states that global-
ization benefi ts every American family to the tune of $9,000 per year (Jensen and Kletzer, 2005).
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4 The Signifi cance of Manufacturing
16 s
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ntri
15 ou
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7
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P) f
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%
12 s (
ofit
11 e pr
at
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10 or
1980 1986 1992 1998 2003 2006 C
Figure 1.4 G7 corporate profi ts as a percent of GDP (Artus, 2006; Union Bank of Switzerland, 2006).
This translates into an almost $1 trillion in benefi ts to the American economy and a tremendous
boost in output.
1.2 IMPORTANCE OF MANUFACTURING
The synopsis of globalization and the state of the world economy presented in the previous section
leads to a simple conclusion: The global output will continue to rise and at a faster pace as the
consumer markets around the world get bigger and bigger. This presents both emerging and
established economies with an unprecedented opportunity to boost national prosperity by effi -
ciently producing high-quality products that are needed and wanted. Any shortcoming in achiev-
ing this outcome most certainly is going to result in the loss of competitiveness in the global
market. For emerging economies, the stakes are much higher, as this will jeopardize the very
prospect of these economies ever achieving a “developed” status. In fact, manufacturing activities
are essential for any nation for the creation of wealth, raising the standard of living of its popula-
tion and, ultimately, achieving a high economic status. In fact, no nation in the world has ever
achieved the developed status without a manufacturing base that comprises at least 20% of GDP
and provides at least 30% of the goods traded between nations (Mital et al., 1994). The importance
of manufacturing in the context of globalization is evident.
For many countries, such as Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan, that have no natural resources
of consequence manufacturing is the only means of survival. These countries must generate
wealth by trading high-value-added products with the rest of the world and use that wealth to
meet their need for energy and staples.
The manufacturing, however, must be competitive. That is, the unit labor cost must be held
down and the output must be of the high quality that consumers want. Further, the output must
make it to the global market in a timely manner. It is imperative to realize that poor-quality
products can result in the loss of national prestige and the stigma associated with producing low-
quality products is neither easy nor inexpensive to overcome. Producing innovative products of
high quality also requires avoiding intellectual stagnation and loss of creativity. These are the
essential ingredients of remaining competitive. To benefi t fully from globalization, countries such
as the United States and United Kingdom must produce higher-value-added goods and services
while keeping their markets open and fl exible.
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Importance of Manufacturing 5
The importance of output, and thereby manufacturing, is further demonstrated by the vigor of
consumers in the developing countries. It was a commonplace belief that American consumers,
by virtue of their anemic savings culture, keep the global economy humming. It was said that, if
the United States catches cold, Japan, which must survive on the strength of its exports, gets
pneumonia. This is no longer so. Japan no longer is dependent on the United States as the primary
market for its exports, as seen in Figure 1.5. While exports from the United States and United
Kingdom to emerging economies have stagnated, exports from Japan have fl ourished. And while
the U.S. GDP is on the decline, the GDP of emerging economies is on the rise (Figure 1.2). What
these trends indicate is that the emerging economies, primarily in Asia, currently drive the world
economy. The Asian countries are not only producing more, they are consuming more. The world
economy increasingly is dependent on the growth in domestic demand in Asian markets. In terms
of purchasing-power parity, Asia’s consumer market now is larger than America’s (The Econo-
mist, September 2006). Keep in mind that the Asian markets are yet to develop fully; masses of
new consumers are yet to appear on the scene. The growth in the Asian economies also means
that the world is less vulnerable to a single economy, America’s, and is likely to be more stable.
All this makes for a very strong case for manufacturing, particularly for manufacturing high-
value-added products.
While one can see that manufacturing is important, owing to the need to increase output, it is
critical to realize that manufacturing must be effi cient. Approximately fi ve sixths of this planet’s
nearly 6 billion people live in areas considered emerging economies. As they get richer, they
want more goods that improve their standard of living — houses, cars, home appliances, and the
like. This, in turn, means a huge increase in consumption and demand for energy and raw materi-
als. China alone has accounted for one third of the increase in world oil consumption and nearly
one fourth of the increase in world metal consumption in the last 5–10 years. While some of this
consumption is the result of shifting production operations from Japan, Europe, and North
America to China, most of it is the result of growth in world output. As the domestic demand in
China and other Asian countries, such as India, increase, the demand for oil and metals increases
further. Moreover, as the standard of living in developing countries improves, demand for energy
9
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Germany n
o
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6 n
gi
r
Japan e
m
e
o
P) t
Britain D
3 G
of
%
United states
s (
rt
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0 Ex
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Figure 1.5 Exports to emerging economies as a percentage of GDP (adapted from The Economist, September 2006).
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