Journal of Materials Processing Technology 76 (1998) 12 15

Logistic orientated product design

H.-P. Wiendahl, H. Stritzke *
Uni6ersity of Hanno6er, Institute of Production Systems, Callinstrasse 26, D -30167 Hanno6er, Germany Received 28 May 1997

Abstract The essential principle for production companies all over the world remains to market new products of higher quality and faster than their competitors. Long product-lifetimes, central production structures and static market and competition surroundings are things of the past. In this context in recent years, the simultaneous engineering i.e. integrated and time parallel working on the product and process designhas become the most successful plan to increase the efciency in the product development process of products. However, this method is usually used inside the company. In the future however, companies will work in temporary strategic production networks together, in order to guarantee their core competencies and therefore the market and competitive position. In the context of the worldwide integration of several external partnerships in the product development process, the existing basics of simultaneous engineering are not sufcient. In this respect, the rapid progress in the eld of information technology and the internet are disclosing new potentials. 1998 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Logistic; Simultaneous engineering; Information technology

1. Trends in the surrounding market and competition Against the background of global displacement of competition, companies are forced to concentrate their strength on the abilities they know best their core competence [1]. As a result of this change, the international division of labour is already gaining in importance today. For example, an American has to pay $10 000 when buying a new Pontiac Le Mans from General Motors. For assembly operations, $3000 of the total sum goes to South Korea, $1750 for high technology components (motor, gears and electronics) to Japan, $750 for product design to Germany, $400 for various small components to Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, $250 for publicity and marketing to Great Britain and about $50 for data processing to Ireland and Barbados. Less than $4000 stays in the US [2]. Together with the known development in relation to customer-orientation, expansion of variety and short product-lifetimes this trend demands a high level of exibility from companies. With new external and internal organization structures, this aim is said to have
* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 49 511 7623516; fax: + 49 511 7623814; e-mail: stritzke@ifa.uni-hannover.de

been achieved. In the future, functional cooperations with external partnerships will be involved in strategic, regional and operative production networks, all being virtual companies [3]. For the internal structures, concepts such as breathing factory, module factory, fractal factory and holonic factory as basic solutions are discussed [4]. All of these concepts are part of the trend towards decentralization and self-organization.

Fig. 1. Number of modications during the project running time of the product development [5].

0924-0136/98/$19.00 1998 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. PII S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 9 7 ) 0 0 3 7 8 - 6

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Fig. 2. International comparison of the performance of production development in the car industry in the mid-nineties [5]

Still missing are describable methods for the decentrally organized courses of design. Hence, there is no appropriate tool available at present which can assist the personnel who are familiar with the design and realization in a specic way.

2. Product and production design as innovative elds In the described turbulent surroundings of the market, the business of production companies in the future is, now as ever, to make products available more quickly. These should be of optimal quality and variety, be favorably priced and produced on schedule. Against the background of global participation, the product and production design is becomming especially important, because the essential decits of the Western industrial nations in international comparison lie here. The fact that this case is special is shown in the example below: the number of modications during the project running time of the product development is shown in Fig. 1. In the West, a product is developed without taking into consideration the technical realization. This is recognizable by the very high number of modications just prior to the start of production. In contrast, the Japanese concentrate their activities at an extremely early stage in product development, in order to prevent modications at the beginning of produc-

tion. This leads to a substantial competitive advantage for the Japanese, since the costs of modications rise progressively with the project running time. These modication costs contribute to the total cost of the product in a considerable manner. Two other decits in relation to this exist and are dramatically shown in Fig. 2. First, the development expenditure in Japan half that of the West. This is shown by the number of employees and work hours required within the project team. Part of this low expenditure is certainly accounted for by the integration of a much greater number of subcontractors. Second, the Japanese have a higher technical level for production of developed products. This is a result of the short time between the start of production and the rst point of sale, as well as the very short time reqired for the return to normal productivity and quality. The target for product and production design is the result of the following facts: a decreasing number of modications must be carried out in the early stages of product development respectively they have to be completely avoided. In the best case, this measure will lead to a compensation to the competitors of the far East. In the future therefore, it must be the main focus of all endeavors to reduce the total timefrom inception up to the launching of the product onto the marketin worldwide production networks in order to achieve a competitive advantage.

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Fig. 3. Reducing the project running time through parallel work processes.

3. Simultaneous engineering the standard solution up to the present The key idea that with the beginning of product development all concerned parties work in parallel and at overlapping activities together, thus making their specic knowledge available to all, is not new (Fig. 3). Known as simultaneous, or concurrent, engineering, this idea is being transferred to personnel within the company by the assistance of the organization in the form of project management. The successful use of this method is characterized by the following aims: 1. Reduction of the development expenditure. 2. Reduction of the time-to-market from the time of conception of the product. 3. Decrease of development and production costs. 4. Improvement of quality. 5. High degree of safety of the processes. 6. High schedule. The philosophy of simultaneous engineering entails the implementation of a series of methods. The subject of these methods corresponds to the true sense of common product development However, they do not ultimately contribute much to global cooperation or to time parallel adaptation of jobs. It can be shown, for example by the methods of failure-possibilities and failure-inuence-analyses (FMEA). This method must fulll the task of systematic registration and avoidance of potential mistakes in the product development, as well as while planning assembly and production processes. This analysis results in the denition of measures for avoiding such mistakes. This is certainly a suitable possibility for making specic knowledge available in the development process, but as a method or tool for the support of parallel work processes, it is rather unsuitable.

In general, it is noticeable that existing methods of simultaneous engineering are either essentially concentrated on the analyses and the transparent representation of existing processes, or based on integrated planning, information and communication systems.

4. Logistically orientated product designa new solution It is clear that the methods and expedients in use at present are not sufcient. The institute of production systems has carried out various practical projects in the eld of plant layout, organization and logistics. As a result of these projects, it is well-known that now as ever, the production technician is involved in the development process only at a very late stage. Also, the personnel entrusted with the design of the structures and the production logistics did not participate in this work in any way. On the basis of the restriction of the draft liberties of each following skilled departmentafter determination of the product characteristics it is impossible for this proceeding to establish an optimum for the process characteristics. The same applies to the logistic characteristics. For this reason, a research project at the institute for production systems has recently included the development of a software tool which supports the parallel work processes from the view of the design, the technology and the logistics. In this project, the concept of simultaneous engineering must be worked out up to the possibility that the production logistic already prescribes an exact specication for the product and the necessary technology, in the sense of a logistically orientated product design at the starting point of the design.

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Fig. 4. Construction of an information system for assistance of simultaneous engineering in product development.

The rst point of departure in the implementation of such a tool is the reection that both the old developments in the eld of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) and the new data warehouse concepts are failing. The reason for this is their complexity and the necessity of giving every piece of necessary information each time for every question asked. Another important point for the development is the fact that it is very difcult to press creative, motivated and responsible employees into the prefabricated schemes of a software package. For this reason, it must be guaranteed that all experts in the team can continue to work with their own preferred software. However, it would then be necessary that the provision of information for each concerned person is carried out in a simple manner and without loss of time. As a minimum, the concept must guarantee the possibility of a distributed product development worldwide. Based on this work, the world wide web (www) of the internet was chosen as the basis for the tool. The www fullls all the requirements without exception. The three important standards of web the uniform re-

source locator (url), the hypertext transfer protocol (http) and the hypertext markup language (html)enable the necessary information to be made available and retrievable to all team members. This information can be accessed from every personal computer. Access is very easy, without necessitating knowledge of the standards, as well as being decentralized and accessible from every common application. Fig. 4 shows the theoretical construction of this information system.

References
[1] C.K. Prahalad, G. Hamel, Nur Kernkompetenzen sichern das 8 berleben, Harv. Manager 2 (1991), S. 66 78. U [2] R.B. Reich, Die neue Weltwirtschaft Das Ende der nationalen 8 konomie. Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt, 1993. O [3] H.-P. Wiendahl, u.a.: Zuku nftige PPS-Systeme mu ssen LogistikNetzwerke beherrschen, PPS Management 1996, S. 6 ff. [4] H.J. Warnecke, Revolution der Unternehmenskultur Das fraktale Unternehmen, Springer, Berlin, 1993. [5] J. Krottmaier, Leitfaden des Simultaneous Engineering, Springer, Berlin, 1995.