PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP (PDE)

Transcription

1 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP (PDE) FALL SEMESTRE MEMec, MEM Faculty Marco Leite Tel: (ext. 1749) Gab 1.10 Pav Mec 2 Elsa Henriques - elsa.h@ist.utl.pt Tel: (ext. 1556) Pav Mec 1 Ground floor COURSE CONTEXT and OVERVIEW Employers of engineering professionals point several drawbacks to graduate engineers, namely, the lack of a systems vision of a typical engineering problem. In real, everyday life, the typical problems the engineers face have no single solution: they involve several inter related factors, both technical and social. During their graduation in Mechanical Engineering, where this course is included, the future engineers are usually not faced with a global perspective of the development of new products. Each course deals with a small part of the development process, without a unifying course the glue everything together. The present course will do just that: an integration of the topics covered in other courses along the graduation years. A structured methodology for the development of new products is presented. This being a generic, optional course, it can be elected by any student of IST. It is of special interest to the students of Mechanical Engineering, but can also be taken by students of Engineering Management, Engineering and Naval Architecture and Aerospace Engineering, to name but a few. The figure below shows the emphasis placed on the topics during this course. 1/8

2 It can be seen from the publication dates of the bibliographic references that the topics addressed are of extreme importance in a competitive market, where innovation is paramount. Portugal is beginning to have teaching of Product development as normal in engineering and business schools, but the demand for engineers with this knowledge in the coming years will grow. This knowledge will be an added value in a European and Global market. The present course evolved from a former course on Product Development to which a module on Entrepreneurship was added. The course has maintained a collaboration with the Junior Achievement, - Graduate Program. Details below. RECENT PAST The course exists since the academic year of It has enrolled a growing number of students. Traditionally, the course has students from different backgrounds, therefore potentiating the exchange of different experiences, knowledge and skills that comes from interdisciplinary teams. Students from the ERASMUS program have enrolled in the course coming from France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Poland, further enriching the exchange of knowledge and cultural background. COURSE OBJECTIVES Product Development consists of a structured and generic methodology with the objective of turning customer needs into successful products (new or adapted). At the end of this course, the student will be able to: Identify customer needs and translate them into product specifications; Understand the product as a whole, from the first design sketches to the final production stages and commercialization; Design a product inside a team, innovating and creating based on market needs; Implement a structured methodology, reducing uncertainty, risk and tine spent from idea to market launch; Make a development plan with milestones and resource allocation for the different product development phases, establishing targets and partial objectives; Communicate with all the stakeholders, understanding clearly their role and the role of others. 2/8

3 COURSE SYLLABUS 1. Introduction. Presentation of different types of products. Tangible and intangible products. Successful products. 2. Products and Services. Industrial products and consumer products. Product attributes, brand, packaging, labelling and product support services. Product mix. 3. Innovation and creativity in product development (PD). How to promote innovation in the creation of new products. 4. Technology transfer and Intellectual Property 5. Product development process and organization. The PD process for generic products. Organizing the PD team. 6. Product planning. Product portfolio. Classification of PD projects. Derivative products, Breakthrough products ; Platform Products ; Mission Statements. 7. Identifying customer needs. Methods of identifying customer needs. Hierarchization of needs. 8. Product specifications. The process of converting needs into specifications. Establishing target specifications. Identifying specifications from competing products. Establishing final specifications. Trade-offs. 9. Concept generation. Development of method based on the following phases: clarifying the problem, external search, internal search. Decision analysis. 10. Concept selection. Qualitative and quantitative methods to select concepts. 11. Concept testing. Defining the test objectives. Identifying the test format and the target public. Methods to communicate the concept: CAD models, rapid prototyping, storyboards, etc. 12. Product architecture. Product modularity. Implications of modularity on product evolution. Platforms and platform planning. Sub-systems. Design of the integration for the sub-systems. System interfaces. 13. Industrial design. The contribution of product styling. The process of industrial design. Industrial design for technologydriven and user-driven products. Evaluating the quality of industrial design. 14. Risk management. Identifying and evaluating the risk factors and contingency plans 15. Economic analysis and sources of financing 16. Legal aspects associated with startups 18. Prototyping. Identification of critical parts to prototype. Robust Design. 19. Design for Manufacturing and Assembly. Design for the Environment. 20. Seminars. A group of engineering professionals will be invited to present a set of relevant seminars on PD-related topics. 21. Design discussions. During the semester several discussion sessions will be promoted, with all the design teams, to help come up with new ideas about each design project. 3/8

4 ASSESSMENT The student will be assessed through a design project and a prototype (optional). In the design project, inside a design team, the student must implement the methods learned in the course. The project will be about developing a product, suggested by the design team and approved by faculty. The project will be divided in partial assignments during the semester. The design project will be discussed at the beginning of the semester. Each team will have 5 students. At the end of the semester, each design team will make a 15 minute presentation of their product, followed by a 10 minutes discussion. The students will be graded based on the design assignments, the design presentation and the optional prototype. Maximum grades are as follows: Design assignments and presentation 80%; Prototype 15% and Faculty assessment 5%. Faculty will assign different grades to each of the team members if the work was not split in equal shares among them. Frequency of attendance to classes will also be a factor in grading A peer review system will be used to give feedback to every team member about the perceived behavior by their team mates. All reports will be submitted in electronic format (PDF preferred), via the course webpage in Fenix system. The possibility of filing a patent as a consequence of the product designed during the semester will be discussed further down in this document. RECOMMENDED BIBLIOGRAPHY Product Design & Development K. T. Ulrich, S. D. Eppinger McGraw-Hill 2008, 6th Ed ISBN Note This book will be the essential text of the course. Product Design Kevin Otto, Kristin Wood, Prentice-Hall 2001 ISBN Note alternative book. 4/8

5 Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur John Wiley and Sons, 2010 ISBN-13: Note book recommended for the entrepreneurship part of the course (also available in Portuguese) OFFICE HOURS - Marco Leite: Thursday s 09:00 às 11:00. Room 1.01, Mechanical Eng. Building II. Students can, and should, use to contact faculty. Answers will be as prompt as possible. FINAL REMARKS On due dates for the assignments: The due dates for the assignments were defined according to the workload required for the other courses during this semester, and therefore will not be changed. Are reports and presentations are mandatory and in due date. On the prototype: A prototype is a physical artifact that reproduces fully or partially the functionalities of the real product. The Mechanical Engineering Department has a machine shop equipped with some machine tools to help students develop their prototypes, if requested. Students should use the istartlab for 3D printing. 2/istartlab/ On filing a patent for your product: Students are encouraged to innovate and develop new products. During the semester, all the students will have a seminar on intellectual property. Faculty will chose one team to receive special support for filing a patent, if the product is promising, under the guidance of the Intellectual Property Office from IST. If the team takes up this opportunity and the patent is filed, the students will get an extra point on their grades. OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST Creating Breakthrough Products J. Cagan & C. Vogel, Prentice Hall 2002, ISBN The Art of Innovation Tom Kelley, Currency Doubleday 2001, ISBN Materials and Design - The art and science of material selection in product design Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson, Butterworth-Heinemann 2002, ISBN /8

6 The PDMA Handbook of new product development Milton Rosenau Jr, John Wiley & Sons 1996, ISBN The evolution of useful things Henry Petroski, Vintage Books 1994 ISBN Design Secrets: Products L. Bjornlund, C. Cullen, C. Fishel, IDSA 2001, ISBN Design Secrets: Products 2 Lynn Haller, Cheryl Cullen, IDSA 2004, ISBN Effective Small Business Management N. Scarborough, T. Zimmer, Prentice-Hall 2006, ISBN OTHER INITIATIVES WITHIN THIS COURSE Junior Achievement Start-up Program The Start-up Program is an international competition in which the aim is to help students understand the role of companies in society. With the help and advisory of volunteers from junior Achievement, the Start-up program fosters entrepreneurship. Students will manage a complete enterprise cycle, starting with an idea for a product or service, moving on to the formation of a management board, eventually raising funds and becoming stock holders, then producing, marketing and selling the product. The Start-up Program helps students embrace the entrepreneurial spirit, the interdependence between different departments, the daily work within a company and its functional environment, calling their attention for the possibility of self-employment as a career option. During the semester a session will be devoted to explaining how the Start-up program works and students are encouraged to enroll, with full support from faculty. Students from IST were granted prizes on past editions of the program. 6/8

7 IMPORTANT DATES AND ASSIGNMENTS DESCRIPTION # Description Date Type Groups formation 26-Sep T1 Preliminary identification of market needs 02-Oct 1 PPT 5% P1 Focus on a market need. Establishing a mission statement 09-Oct 2 PPT 5% P2 Study of user needs, target specifications and final mission statement 23-Oct 2 PPT 5% P3 Concept drawings, patent and market research 30-Oct 2 PPT 5% Peer review system (1) 04-Nov T2 Presentation of concept drawings 06-Nov 3 PPT 10% P4 Focus on one concept and one business model 13-Nov Report 20% P5 Detailed patent research, concept testing, final product drawings 20-Nov 2 PPT 5% Interest on patent submission 30-Nov P6 Business plan 04-Dec 2 PPT 5% Peer review system (2) 07-Dec T3 Final presentation; Presentation of the prototype 11-Dec 3 PPT 10% P7 Final report 16-Dec Report 25% P8 High quality photos of the prototype 16-Dec 5% On the type of admissible products: While special cases will be considered, you are strongly encouraged to choose a project satisfying all of the following constraints: 1. 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. 2. 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). 3. 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. Do not conclude that this limit will make your product or semester s work trivial because you will be doing many things besides typical engineering that require considerable effort. 4. You should be confident of being able to prototype the product. For example, a razor like Gillette s Mach3 may have about 10 parts, but would require tens of thousands of euros to create a functional prototype. 5. The product should require no basic technological breakthroughs. You do not have time to deal with large technological uncertainties. 1 On the Theoretical class. 2 On the Problems class. 3 On all the classes of the week 7/8

8 6. You should have access to more than five potential lead users of the product (more than 20 would be nice). For example, you would have great difficulty researching agricultural irrigation systems without leaving the city where you live. 7. Good reports contain data, evidence of contact with customers and potential business partners, evidence of verification that the product can meet the specifications, and evidence of validation that the product can meet customers expectations On the problems class: Problems classes are mainly for discussion and teamwork about the final project. In P1, P2, P3, P5 and P6, faculty will select one or two groups to present their team work to the colleagues. All members of the group should be present. This will come without notice, so all the groups must be prepared to present in the beginning of the class. Apart from this, group exercises are suggested to students. On the content of the assignments: No single report should exceed 20 pages in length, with the exception of P3 and P7. Assignments are to be presented in a PowerPoint format, except the ones marked. T1 Identification of various market pains, where the team feels there is a potential for the introduction of a new product. It must be a presentation with one page per market pain, showing the market potential and what it is that the team is envisioning as a product. P1 After one single market pain is chosen, present a brief analysis of the target market and eventual competing products. First draft of a mission statement. Powerpoint presentation. P2 This Powerpoint presentation must clearly indicate the existence of interviews done within the target market, leading to identified customer needs. It must also contain target specifications for the product and a final mission statement. P3 Presentation showing ALL the ideas the team had that satisfy the customer needs previously found. This presentation must have evidence of a preliminary patent search and market analysis. T2 The team must present a compilation of all the concept drawings on P3. P4 Choice of the final concept, showing explicitly the reasoning behind the process. Report. P5 Detailed analysis of existing patents. Evidence of showing your concept to potential customers and gathering their reactions. Final drawings. P6 Business model, with an operations plan and a brief financial analysis. P7/T3 Oral presentation of the product, with the physical prototype. P8 High quality photos or multimedia of the prototype, preferably in use, must be sent. Presentations P1 to P7 are to be submitted in the Fenix system and presented in the problems class. T1, T2 and T3 are discussed in the theoretical classes and problems classes. The written final report must not exceed 30 pages and should be independent from the assignments delivered throughout the semester, possibly including improvements and amends. LAST UPDATE ON 18/September/2017 8/8