Research and development are actions that are calculated to investigate procedures and techniques that will aid in the improvement and development of new items. As a result, a research and development department is a critical component of every organization's ability to properly manage its technology (R. B, 2015).
To be complete, the product life cycle must go through the following stages: identification of need, product planning, product research, design, construction, evaluation, product use, and logistic support. The consumer wants; gaining a competitive advantage and defeating prospective adversaries will aid in the identification of needs. The planning and research services study and select the best idea (Beck D, 2013). After the study, the ideas pass through the design function to develop prototypes. The prototypes are then tested in the production and evaluation stage. They are then quality checked and analyzed to ensure its service is adequate. In the final stage, the product is used in utilization and logistic function.
Technology life cycle is the time and cost of developing the technology, cost recovery timeline, and modes of making technology to achieve a profit proportionate to the expenses and risks involved. The technology life cycle is sequenced as follows research and development, application launch, application growth, mature stage, and technical declining. The evaluation of risks and investment of the most suitable idea is done at the research and development stage. Technology is released, and the capital invested for development is issued at the application launch and growth stages. The technology is accepted at the maturity stage though the profit is reduced it becomes familiar. In the decline stage, the importance of the technology is lost as new technology is developed (Beck, D, 2013).
Selecting R&D Projects
Ideas are always more than the resources thus the need for selection of R&D projects. After the initial screening, a proposed 60 ideas will go down to 12 right ones. The primary screening includes testing for technical factors, research direction and balance, timing, stability, position factor, market growth factors, marketability, financial factors and patentability from a standard checklist. Once the 60 ideas reduce to 12, they are further evaluated using quantitative approaches like a simple payback time and the time value of money.
Making R&D organizations successful
R&D and Business Strategy
The strategy that is adopted at the planning phase should incorporate research, product and process development, and manufacturing engineering. Organizations should consider the following classes of technologies;
Base technologies- these are technologies that give a competitive advantage.
Key technologies- will ensure competitive advantage.
Pacing technologies- these technologies have the ability to become key technologies but are expensive and unaffordable to some.
Evaluating R&D Effectiveness
The effectiveness of an organization is measured by the following 11 criteria- the ratio of research costs to profits, total percentage earnings due to new products, market share due to new products, research costs due to increase in sales, research costs to the ratio of new and old sales. The research cost per employee, the rate of investigation cost to overhead expenses, cash flows, research audits, weighted averages of values and objectives, and project profiles. The effectiveness of an individual is gauged by performance appraisal, management by objectives (MBO) number of patents and publications, and citations by others for those publications.
Support for R&D
An efficient R&D should have the following quality support services- technician support, shop support of mechanics, glassblowers and carpenters, unique library, technical publication support, responsive system, computer facilities, and internal commercialization process.
Protection of Ideas
Organizations have to protect their intellectual property both organizational and individual plans to ensure it has a competitive advantage. An intellectual law deals with the protection of those to create originals (Gifford E, 2013). The four legal ways of protection are patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks. A patent is a property right that an inventor is given by the government which gives the designer complete ownership and rights over it for another author to use the property they will have to have authorization from the owner for a specified period. Patents are in three types – utility, plant, and design. Design patent rights are 14years long, and utility and plant patent are for 20 years. A trademark distinguishes a product from its competitors. Copyrights protect one’s ideas which should be in a fixed tangible medium of expression. Trade secrets are process, formula, specification that is only known by the owner with no time limitations. Trade secrets have protection as long as they are not disclosed.
Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
Creativity is the mental ability to think in a different perspective to have a distinctive approach to a task. The creative process has the following stages- preparation, frustration and incubation, illumination and verification, brainstorming and mind mapping
Chapter 10: Managing Engineering Design
The design is a model represented in the form of drawings and specifications which are developed by the customer needs then produced using the manufacturing processes. Engineering design is the alteration of the information at hand to the desired product.
Systems Engineering/ New Product Development
Systems engineering is a multidisciplinary subject that creates and execute processes to meet the needs of customers and stakeholders. They focus on high quality, cost saving and time civil procedures in the system’s life cycle (“what is systems engineering?” n.d.). Systems engineering process has seven steps:
State the problem – Is a mission stamen that describes the functions to be performed by the system
Investigative alternatives – the alternatives available should be accessed through performance, schedule, cost, and risk factors. For efficient and smooth evaluation multi-criteria decision-aiding techniques are used.
Model the system –the best alternatives are developed as models.
Integrate-people, systems, and businesses should work together for development as subsystems are integrated by use of interfaces.
Launch the system –for the system to works as expected it should be put to use for output production.
Assess performance – the system performance should be evaluated through customer satisfaction, productivity, and some problem reports.
Re-evaluate –this stage is important as managers reassess the system through feedbacks and observe outputs to be able to modify the system.
Concurrent Engineering
Concurrent engineering is the uniting of all technical and mechanical disciplines like marketing, finance, accounting, and engineering to reduce the time to market and cost. In this process, each stage is carried out in parallel rather than a sequential order (Thamhain H, 2012). The advantages of concurrent engineering are –consideration of designs from final stages, reduced time of changing the design into distribution product, and enhanced customer expectation and needs. The stages of concurrent engineering are as follows:
Conceptual
Technical feasibility
Development
Commercial validation & production preparation
Full –scale production
Product support
Design Criteria
Product Liability- is the legal obligation of an organization for making and selling faulty products (Taschner, H. 2015). To reduce liability, the following should be done – have design specifications, use high quality and standard materials, test and analyze the design, review of the design process, use proven manufacturing methods, conduct a quality control and inspection process. Warning labels should be availed with clear instructions, clear distribution system, give warranty cards, have a failure reporting and analysis system, provide product safety measures for product life cycle.
Reliability-Reliability is the period when a product has zero failures. Estimation of reliability is important in designing a system which can be done through – simple series model, simple parallel model, series-parallel models, and bathtub curve model. The following techniques are used to develop a system for reliability:
Start with the best
Redundancy
Factor of safety
Fail-safe method
Other design criteria
Maintainability- Is the ease in which a system is restored to its functional status after failure. Maintenance activities are divided as
Administration and Preparation of time
Logistics time
Active maintenance time
Time taken between each maintenance action is called Mean Time Between Maintenance, and the average duration is adopted for the three maintenance is Mean Downtime. Maintenance can be corrective or preventative.
Availability-Availability is the amount of time a system is in a functioning condition. There are two types of availability inherent and operational.
Standardization-This is the process in which a set of rules, specifications, and procedures are formulated and implemented to achieve uniformity in a process.
Producibility-Producibility is the ease of manufacturing a product in large quantities
Value Engineering/Analysis
Value engineering is the analyzing of the components in a product to eliminate unwanted costs in its product lifecycle without losing its quality and effectiveness (Younker D 2012). Value engineering is done in the following eight steps – orientation, information, function, creativity, evaluation, recommendation, implementation, and audit. The process of value engineering also improves quality management, resource efficiency, simplifies procedures, paperwork is minimized, low staff costs enhance procedural efficiency, and competitive advantage in the market.
References
Beck, D. (2013). Technology development life cycle processes. 150-400. doi:10.2172/1089868
Gifford, E., & Goldstein, A. (2013). Ownership of intellectual property. Patent Laws for Scientists and Engineers, 150-400. doi:10.1201/9781420028577.pt3
R. B. (2015). Managing Projects in Research and Development. 50-180. doi:10.4324/9781315593616
Taschner, H. C. (2015). Product liability: basic problems in a comparative law perspective. Product Liability in Comparative Perspective, 155-166. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511493850.011
Thamhain, H. J. (2012). Concurrent Engineering for Integrated Product Development. The Wiley Guide to Managing Projects, 450-470. doi:10.1002/9780470172391.ch19
Younker, D. (2012). Value Engineering. 200 -289. doi:10.1201/9780203912751
.
