Modernizing Product Development Processes: Guide for Engineers

by Jon M Quigley, Amol Gulve

Product lifecycles have shortened due to competition, rapidly changing markets, emerging technology, and regulation. Modernizing Product Development Guide for Engineers provides a foundation to focus on giving engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators a guide to developing products with a new approach instead of a traditional product development cycle. Using the fundamental pillars of this book, the authors demonstrate how to bridge the gap in today's product development cycle to improve "time to market" needs in a fast-paced environment. These pillars -Learning from failures and doing -Harnessing creativity (out-of-the-box thinking) -Front loading (develop concepts early) -Explore multiple possible solutions -Technology/Manufacturing readiness level -Modularity (integrate common solutions) In addition, the authors prepare engineers to scale up production to meet customer demands in a dynamic environment by demonstrating how to establish strategies and road maps with a stage gate approach focused on harnessing creativity to build concepts/technologies in early phases. In today's era of innovation, rapid technological growth, and high consumer demand, engineers must adapt and deliver products with reasonable, engineered solutions and this book shows them how.

232 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2023

Reviews

[Pooja · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a world affected by fast paced disruptions and a boom in technological advancements, traditional industries have not remained unaffected. The book is suitably placed to lay a foundation for how traditional thinking around product development must be updated to better deal with the world we find ourselves in today.

A company's profitability depends on time to market for its products and the book starts with describing the shortcomings of traditional product development in handling it. The book also tackles tricky topics like managing customer expectations, learning how to fail productively and promoting innovation while simultaneously striving for maturity in development processes to minimise failure.

Each of these topics have no straight jacket solutions. However the book does a great job at outlining the basic principles from which the reader can begin to develop action plans tailored to their use case. Over a span of seven chapters, the book methodically outlines the basics of every strategy, risk factors and how to handle them.

The content makes no assumptions about a reader's prior knowledge level and explains terms wherever necessary. The content is informative and easy to absorb. The reference material at the end of each chapter is also good further reading for anyone who wishes to look deeper into the topics discussed.

While the strategies are discussed with the automotive industry as the setting, many of these points are universally applicable to different manufacturing and technology industries. The book is a good base for students new to this topic as well as a good refresher for those looking to modernize their particular product processes.

[Chris Maddix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Product development, per author Jon Quigley, is "identifying an untapped market opportunity and converting that opportunity into a valuable product." In a book designed for engineers but consummately readable for laymen, Mr. Quigley explains how this product development takes place. The six essential steps of this process are ideation, which is coming up with the notion of the product, planning, determining whether the product is feasible, then creating, testing and marketing the product. Potential return on investment is calculated, as are product payback period and potential future value. With an eye toward meeting customer expectations while developing the product quickly and reducing product generation cycle time, the company proceeds. And how does the company optimize the product development environment? It starts by emphasizing self directed, work based learning, which enhances the company's adaptive capacity. It harnesses its spontaneous, deliberate, and emotional creativity through a product development team. It suggests front loading product development to ensure greater impact from change and less from cost. It verifies that the public is ready for the product, espouses modular design, and reaps the benefit of effective systems engineers.

Modernizing Product Development Processes is easy to read, flows smoothly, and is loaded with good pictures and pertinent quotes. As the title states, it is a guide for engineers, but this non-engineer handled it just fine.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the general design of this book. There was a lot of information, but I was surprised by the use of colour on the pages. There were clear headings in colourful fonts, and eye-catching images and diagrams. All of this made the book easier on the eyes and made the information within it more accessible and easier to read. There was a lot of information about different techniques and strategies and how they could be applied, so this book was informative, and I think many may find it useful.