Engineering Design Process - Product Development

Explore the engineering design process and modern product development, detailing inputs and outputs, context, and how globalization, digitalization, shorter lifecycles, and mass production shape engineers' approaches.

Define a product by customer needs and map the development process from inputs to market outputs. Balance time, quality, and cost amid external factors in sequential physical-product development.

Explore global trends shaping modern product development—faster life cycles, mass customization, globalization, and digitalization—and how CAD, digital twins, and IoT enable optimized platforms and services.

Navigate how today's design decisions and global collaboration shape the product lifecycle, with design engineers driving most lifecycle costs from onset to manufacturing, marketing, and distribution.

Explore the cost-scope-time-quality triangle and why design constraints shape engineering decisions. Learn to avoid traps, balance creativity with accountability, and prevent over- and under-engineering under real-world limits.

Apply systematic methods to develop innovative products by recombining established solutions, focusing on customer needs and proven technologies rather than relying on elusive creativity.

Discover how to balance scope and quality and avoid underengineering or overengineering by accurately capturing customer requirements, documenting them, and aligning cost, time, and functionality to meet needs and profitability.

Accountability drives a systematic design process, requiring documented safety measures and justified decisions to prevent product failures, loss of life, and legal consequences.

Explore approaches to product development, study black box technical systems, categorize systems for a product function structure, compare problem-solving methods, and review established design methodologies.

The design process converts a given task into a documented technical solution, with task formulation shaped to avoid bias, while non-linear iterations influence the technical system and problem solving methods.

Define technical systems as bounded entities that perform functions beyond physical traits, from axle modules to rail networks. Identify borders, inputs, outputs, components, and environment to enable solution-neutral product design.

Define the functional view as a black-box input-to-output model, classify systems by the type of value they transform (matter, energy, information), and decompose problems in the design process.

Explore problem solving methods used in the design process to transform an initial unwanted state into a desirable end state, accounting for uncertainty, constraints, and evolving customer needs.

Explore core problem solving methods: systematization, targeted questions, negation and re-conceptualization, forward and backward reasoning, and factoring, and how they underpin the systematic product design approach.

Explore three product design approaches—free, opportunistic, and systematic—and learn how systematic methods reduce bias, explore alternatives, and align with customer requirements for innovative, efficient solutions.

Trace the evolution of systematic product design methods from the division of labor in the industrial era to modern design sprints and TRIZ, including 2221 guidelines and prototyping with stakeholder validation.

Explore the core product development process, iterating steps when new information emerges, using methods like requirements, lists, solutions, and concepts, with exercises and a reading list to deepen understanding.

Explore the market need as the chapter's first subchapter, detailing two triggers for product development—customer orders and internal strategy—and how roadmaps, R&D, and RFPs shape design.

Learn four design project types by novelty - new designs, design adaptations, variant designs, and design repetition - and how incremental, sustaining, and disruptive innovations influence market impact.

Explore the product planning process from status quo analysis to market entry, using portfolio matrix, Gartner technology hype cycle, and roadmaps to identify niches.

Conceptualize a product through brainstorming or design sprints with cross-functional stakeholders. Assess ideas against economic, technical, and strategic criteria, define target cost, validate with user tests, and plan the roadmap.

Discover how organizations plan introducing new products and the motivations behind them, and review systematic planning guidelines like the innovator's dilemma and the eat 20 to 20 guideline.

Define the task as the first step in the engineering design process, and learn how to gather, document, and resolve requirements to create a final requirements list.

Position the requirements list as the voice of the customer and a binding contract guiding product design, cost, and stakeholder interests. Define functional and nonfunctional needs and outline classification schemes.

Learn to formulate complete, feasible, unambiguous, verifiable requirements for a product, ensuring atomic, unitary, traceable, and abstract problem formulation while prioritizing and avoiding conflicts.

Leverage standard templates for requirements engineering, including administrative fields such as company data and revision date, market study references, and categorized, traceable, prioritized requirements accessible via cloud or dedicated software.

Adopt a two-phase, systematic approach to gathering requirements: collect and document customer needs, then elaborate with checklists and input from people, documents, and systems, defining initial requirements before development.

Clarify product requirements by uncovering implicit information from customer, company, and environment views. Use triangle model, key feature lists, scenarios, prototyping, and benchmarking to refine lifecycle, manufacturing, and user-skill needs.

Apply scenario planning to generate requirements from positive and negative scenarios, validate them with virtual and physical prototypes, and use morphological analysis and 3d printing to speed development.

Identify conflicting requirements using pairwise comparison with a quality function deployment matrix and flag issues early. Clarify intent with authors, mediate for compromises, and prioritize hard requirements before addressing wishes.

Apply the Kano model to categorize requirements into must haves, one-dimensional, and delighters, guiding product decisions through quick customer judgments and a classification scheme.

Identify key challenges in requirements gathering, such as missing customer focus and scope creep, and outline governance, validation, and revision practices to avoid them. Explore the recommended readings and resources.

Define the product concept by mapping functions and their carriers into the product architecture. Split the chapter into part 2.1, describing a solution-neutral function structure, then exploring multiple solution concepts.

Explore how the function structure maps inputs to outputs to describe product transformations, decompose complex problems, and spark creativity, while documenting function and flow ideas for future modules.

Explore hierarchical function structure by decomposing a product into sub functions for a lawn mower, showing inputs, main function mowing grass, outputs, and how components fulfill tasks.

Build a function structure for a simple product, using a toy water gun to define a 0.5 liters capacity, inputs, outputs, sub-functions, and a trigger that creates a water jet.

Introduce general flows and five fundamental function types—store, change, vary, connect, and channel—and show how concise notation reveals input and output flows in engineering design.

Describe a toy water gun using general flows and functions to map inputs and outputs and trace water, work, trigger signal, and energy through channel, store, change, and connect.

Establish the main function using the black box concept and define inputs and outputs, then create and integrate function structures for flows, starting with the main flow and listing subfunctions.

examine a vacuum cleaner case study by defining the function: collect dust, and outline inputs and outputs, including electric power, removable dust bag, adjustable suction, and a dust level indicator.

Trace the electrical energy flow into a vacuum, its conversion to kinetic energy and pneumatic pressure, and the dust and air flows from collection through filtration to storage and expulsion.

Combine energy and material flows into a single function structure, define system boundaries, and explore representations and subsystems to reveal design flexibility for a vacuum cleaner.

Explore extending the vacuum cleaner energy flow with distance changes and battery operation, adding energy sources, and designing function blocks from collecting dust to indicating fuel.

Apply the solution neutral graphical representation of function structure to formulate main product functions and decompose them into low-level subfunctions with the three-step methodology within the German systematic design process.

Draft a concrete solution concept by identifying working principles, forming working structures, and evaluating options to select the optimal principle solution within the product architecture and bill of materials framework.

Define and analyze working principles by linking physical effects, effect carriers, and geometry to realize functions, and compare lever, wedge, elastic, hydraulics principles to identify feasible solutions.

Find and document working principles from physical effect catalogs, design catalogs, existing products, patents, and nature, starting with existing solutions and extending novel principles to expand the feasible solution space.

Identify working principles from patents and existing products by abstracting the problem, deriving a function structure, and analyzing architectures to reuse and adapt solutions.

Explore how bionics translates nature's principles into engineering designs through a systematic problem-to-solution process, drawing on insect shells, seashells, creativity, techniques, and digital simulation techniques.

Explore how nature solves heat storage, light absorption, and movement of gases and fluids through bionics, with examples like fat isolation, bird migration, cat-eye reflectors, and Velcro-inspired joins.

Learn how to generate novel working principles through interactive workshop formats like brainstorming and the Delphi method, including setup, steps, and benefits for expanding the solution space.

Apply discursive methods to generate many working principle variants by systematically changing attributes (surfaces, geometry, materials, connections) and evaluating them quantitatively to expand the design solution space.

Explore how variable properties of working principles shape system behavior through graphics and examples, from bearing and load arrangements to damper media, movement types, and contact friction.

Analyze how shaft-hub connections with form fit, friction fit, and force fit influence manufacturing, assembly, cost, and maintenance, while bearing options and joint freedom alter load, vibration, and wear.

Prioritize sub functions using a stacie matrix to focus on high-uncertainty elements, balancing existing modules and standardized interfaces with customer-facing functions, to efficiently generate and refine the solution space.

Explore discursive methods, catalogues, creativity techniques, and nature analogies to generate a broad spectrum of working principles for the vacuum cleaner, prioritizing uncertain functions and feasible variants.

Analyze the vacuum cleaner’s function structure, proposing working principles for sub functions like collect dust, power adjustment, and air filtering, then introduce the morphological matrix to compare compatible solutions.

Combine working principles into viable working structures to define product architecture, evaluating compatibility, direct flow of forces, cost, manufacturing, assembly, and durability to select best designs for assessment.

Explore how filtering 2,304 vacuum cleaner structures guides cost-driven and customer-driven design, using narrow morphological boxes and decomposed sub-functions to prioritize critical choices.

Evaluate working structures and select the best fit for embodiment design using a systematic assessment scheme with quantitative scoring, choosing between simple and complex approaches.

Apply the simple method to evaluate design options by coding solutions, using yes-no criteria, and selecting the best in-house feasible structure for a straightforward product.

The complex method guides interdisciplinary teams through five steps—aligning experts, defining criteria, weighting metrics, evaluating solutions, and selecting the optimal option with objective scoring.

Apply best practices to evaluate working structures efficiently, manage uncertainty, document results, and keep the process objective and quantitative to defend decisions with data.

Explore evaluation methods beyond the course approach, including the weighted sum model and the technical economic evaluation method by Kesselring, applying assumptions, calculations, sketches, tests, and simulations to compare solutions.

Interpret results to benchmark each criterion against target metrics, identify weak spots, and select balanced concepts supported by calculations, drawings, and models for product architecture.

Explore the embodiment design phase following conceptual design, refining concepts into a preliminary product layout and validating functionality, production, and service aspects.

Define internal and external forces, select materials and manufacturing methods, identify components and necessary drawings, and perform calculations to ensure functional, manufacturable, and cost-aware systems within production and supply constraints.

refine a defined concept through iterative embodiment design, using parallel work streams and a nine-step guideline to select, detail, optimize layouts, and transfer to the next design phase.

Explore steps of embodiment design, defining requirements, identifying function carriers and rough layouts, refining critical and auxiliary carriers, and applying evaluation, optimization, and design rules for a manufacturable product.

Explore the rules, principles, and guidelines that govern embodiment design, helping engineers create simple, clear, and safe products while preventing costly, unsafe outcomes.

Apply the design rules of clarity, simplicity, and safety to ensure clear functions and predictable load paths. Decompose the function structure to define inputs and outputs and minimize redundancy.

Design for simplicity by minimizing components and ensuring uniform, symmetric parts, enabling easy maintenance, manufacturing, assembly, easy identification of components, and recycling.

Design safety into products by prioritizing direct safety measures, failsafe and safe life concepts, and warnings, guided by risk management, cost considerations, certifications, liability, and market demand for environmental responsibility.

Apply safe-life design measures by defining operating conditions, estimating component lifetimes, and testing systems to prevent failures. Maintain quality, monitor usage, document lifecycle, and involve multi-disciplinary teams to foresee risk.

Apply fail-safe design to preserve residual functionality and enable controlled, predictable failures. Incorporate redundancy, early fault detection, and clear failure indications to protect systems and users.

Examine indirect safety measures—protective systems, protective devices, protective barriers, warning labels, and safety sheets—and summarize material selection rules for static and dynamic loads, corrosion, and lubrication effects.

The lecture explains four design principles for optimal force transmission, focusing on minimizing material through strain paths, uniform stress, and symmetry for predictable deformation.

Explore the task division principle in engineering design, weighing one function per carrier against multi-function carriers, with examples from a cyclical gearbox to balance load, cost, and safety.

Explain the self-help design principle, using system-element arrangement to convert operation loads into auxiliary forces that enhance sealing, safety, and performance, with examples such as centrifugal sealing and pressure-tank seals.

Explore how stability and bistability in product design store energy, minimize friction, and create one or two stable states, illustrated by bottle stoppers and light switches.

Explore design for manufacturing guidelines to minimize cost and effort while preserving quality, by involving manufacturing and sourcing early, standardizing features, and choosing differential over integral designs for easier assembly.

Optimize assembly by considering cost and quality of component combinations in design for assembly. Simplify and standardize components, minimize parts, and enable parallel, modular assembly and inspection to reduce errors.

Optimize product interfaces by evaluating user biomechanics, movement ranges, heights and weights, and physical limits, while addressing heat, fatigue, motivation, and externalities such as vibration and noise.

Design for maintenance boosts reliability and easy servicing through over-dimensioning and thorough load documentation. Modular architecture and wear monitoring enable quick part replacement with minimal delay.

Validate the embodiment design by assessing technical and economical feasibility against the requirements, compare variants with a weighted sum model or technical economic evaluation, and finalize the near-complete product layout.

Finalize the embodiment design by detailing component forms, dimensions, surfaces, and materials, and define manufacturing and assembly processes to compile the final product documentation and cost assessment.

Finalize detailed drawings with dimensions, tolerances, surface quality, and materials. Integrate into a bill of materials, coordinate with manufacturing and purchasing, and document assembly, maintenance, and standards for final checks.

Explore how product documentation covers the full lifecycle, from design specifications and drawings to manufacturing, support, and change management, including external and internal documents and PLM systems.

Explore quality assurance, ISO 9000/9001, and robust product documentation that support knowledge management. Understand challenges from digital products, data growth, and distributed documentation across formats and systems.