Role of design-philosophies in interfacing manufacturing with marketing

Role of design-philosophies in interfacing manufacturing with marketing

0.00 Avg rating0 Votes
Article ID: iaor19991831
Country: Netherlands
Volume: 103
Issue: 3
Start Page Number: 453
End Page Number: 469
Publication Date: Dec 1997
Journal: European Journal of Operational Research
Authors: , ,
Keywords: design, neural networks, marketing
Abstract:

Product design involves the mapping of a product's marketing attributes to its engineering and manufacturing features. In practice, it is a non-trivial task for design engineers to determine an appropriate mapping between a product's marketing and manufacturing attributes so as to generate a product design that satisfies customer-needs while being feasible to produce within the technical and financial constraints of the firm's manufacturing domain. In this paper, we hypothesize that in a mature industry, the expertise that guides designers in this mapping process exists in the form of an engineering design-philosophy that governs the design of products in that industry. Clearly, if we are able to discern the design-philosophies that exist in an industry, they can then be used to channel designers' creativity to be congruent with the commercial objectives of firms in that industry. Using real-world data from the automobile industry, we show the existence of design-philosophies and illustrate methodologies for identifying and interpreting them. We also describe predictive models that allow managers to exploit the knowledge available in these design-philosophies and accurately specify a new product's manufacturing attribute values, given market input regarding the product's desired features. This total approach should save firms valuable product designing time and enable them to generate products that can be successfully produced and sold.

Reviews

Required fields are marked *. Your email address will not be published.