Deck 4: Productprocess Innovation

Question 1

Discuss the pros and cons of open innovation

Answer 1

The pros of open innovation are increasing the number of sources for new and better ideas, leading to higher-quality products; companies can increase the number of products they successfully launch, and reduce the time it takes to bring new products and processes online.  Also, when companies work together to codevelop new products, they often share the financial and legal risks of development.
The cons of open innovation are by including more partners, a firm risks losing control over intellectual property; either intentionally or accidentally, a codevelopment partner may leak secret plans or technical knowledge to competitors or other parties who might use this information against the firm; and a firm can lose control over the goals and timing of the innovation project if it becomes too dependent on partners.

Question 2

Document the steps that someone using the House of Quality procedure might follow in developing:
a.A new mountain bicycle.
b.An introductory operations management course.
c.A new candy bar.

Answer 2

The general steps involved in developing customer requirement planning matrix or house of quality are mentioned below:
1.Finding customer desired traits
2.Assessment of competition
3.Technical features and target value
4.Interrelationships
5.Process plan and instructions
For a mountain bicycle
The steps involved in developing a mountain bicycle are mentioned below:
1.Finding customer desired traits : Finding the expectations and desires of customer and then documenting them.Convert expectations and desires into attributes such as acquisition cost, maintenance, durability, style, newness, ease of customization, availability etc.2.Assessment of competition: Assessing the top mountain bicycle manufactures' capability on a scale of 1 to 5 for each attribute.Also rate your on this scale too.This can be done by assessment surveys.
3.Technical features and target value: Assess technical features of design and manufacturing that helps in delivering the customer desired traits.
4.Interrelationships : Find out how different mountain bicycle traits are related to technical features.For example: the acquisition cost is strong related to supplier choice while customizability is related to standard parts.
5.Process plan and instructions: Translate the performance targets into process specifications.For example: For safety consideration the factor of safety for all load bearing parts of mountain bicycle should be at least 1.5.
For an Introductory Operations Management Course
The steps involved in developing a operations management course are mentioned below:
1.Finding student desired traits : Finding the expectations and desires of the students and then documenting them.Convert expectations into attributes such as course fee, duration, accreditation of course, newness, availability of seats, after course placement etc.2.Assessment of competition: Assessing the top collages providing similar courses on a scale of 1 to 5 for each attribute.Also rate yourself on this scale too.This can be done by assessment surveys.
3.Technical features and target value: Assess technical features of course design and teaching that helps in delivering the student desired traits.For example: The choice of faculty, labs, library, online support etc.4.Interrelationships : Find out how different desired traits are related to technical features.For example: ease of learning is related to the availability of course module in online format, soft versions of lectures etc.5.Process plan and instructions: Translate the performance targets into process specifications.For example: Fee of the course cannot be more than $50,000.
For a candy bar
The steps involved in developing a mountain bicycle are mentioned below:
1.Finding customer desired traits : Finding the expectations and desires of customer and then documenting them.Convert expectations and desires into attributes such as flavors, sweetness, smoothness, cost, design, packaging, sizes etc
2.Assessment of competition: Assessing the some of the best candy makers' candy on a scale of 1 to 5 for each attribute.Also rate your on this scale too.This can be done by assessment surveys.
3.Technical features and target value: Assess technical features of composition and manufacturing processes that helps in delivering the candy that fulfills customer requirements of taste buds.
4.Interrelationships : Find out how different traits of candy are related to the technical features such as manufacturing processes and use of ingredients.For example: The smoothness of the candy is related to casting process and use of abrasive polishing to remove the sharp corners.
5.Process plan and instructions: Translate the performance targets into process specifications.For example: For cost of candy can't be more than $0.5 per candy or candy can't weight less than 5 grams.

Question 3

Under what circumstances might concurrent engineering (overlapping the stages of design and development)be a bad idea?

Answer 3

If the firm making the product needs to save on development costs, concurrent engineering might be a bad idea.In the functional/sequential approach, the design and development stages are pursued sequentially, without much interaction among various functional groups.This approach can lower the development costs because each functional group focuses only on its specific development tasks.

Question 4

Discuss the roles that personnel from warranty/field service and the manufacturing shop floor might play when conducting an FMEa.

Question 5

Question 6

In which stages of a new product design and development project are supply chain operations managers most likely to have the greatest impact? Why?

Question 7

How would you describe the team members' morale at this point? What are their primary concerns?

Question 8

Describe a situation where the functional/sequential approach to product development might be more appropriate than the integrated/concurrent engineering approach.

Question 9

Identify the failure modes for a cellular phone.

Question 10

Were the "problems" encountered in the development project "typical", or could they have been avoided?

Question 11

Given the team members' comments, what advice would you give Roger Terry regarding the double-block timer development effort?

Question 12

Operations personnel tend to favor product component standardization while design and marketing personnel tend to resist it.Why is this true? What are the potential disadvantages to standardization?

Question 13

Conduct an FMEA for a simple service or tangible product with which you are familiar.Identify a few failure modes, estimate the RPNs, and recommend possible improvements.

Question 14

Why are discipline and flexibility both needed in new product/process innovation? Are these two capabilities in conflict with each other?

Question 15

Complete a value analysis for the following products:
a.Paper clip
b.Textbook

Question 16

What major differences would you expect to find in the management approaches used for breakthrough innovation projects versus those used for derivative or enhancement projects?

Question 17

Make a list of customer desired traits for an MP3 player.