Product Design and Development

The module introduces the product design and development as a project-based course with a focus on the sequence of steps and activities required to conceive, design, develop, and commercialise a product. Students would be familiarised with modern tools and methods for creating a new product or developing an existing one. The module would develop students’ confidence of their abilities as well as awareness of the role of multiple functions (e.g. marketing, finance, industrial design, and manufacturing) in creating a new product.
This module covers the following topics:

• Product Development Process and Organisation: Product development process; types of product development; and product development organisations.
• Customer Needs Identification: Needs vs. specifications; steps for identifying customer needs, the art of eliciting customer needs data; customer data template; example / case study.
• Product Specifications: Target specifications; refined specifications; steps for establishing target and refined specifications; example / case study.
• Concept Generation: Concept generation process; common mistakes during concept generation; steps for concept generation process; example / case study.
• Concept Selection: Methods of choosing a concept; two-stage concept selection methodology; benefits of structured concept selection methodology; example / case study.
• Product Architecture: Modular and integral architectures; influence factors for product architecture; four-step methodology for establishing the architecture.
• Industrial Design: Importance assessment of industrial design; management of industrial design process; involvement of industrial design in product design & development; assessing the quality of industrial design.
• Design for Manufacturing: Design for manufacturing methodologies; impact of DFM decisions on other factors; manufacturing improvement method.
• Prototyping: Fundamentals of prototyping; and application of rapid prototyping processes.
• Product Development Economics: Elements of economic analysis; four-step methodology for economic analysis for product development.
• Product Development Projects Management: Understanding and presenting tasks; baseline project planning; accelerating the project, executing the project.